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By Mom Unplugged, February 1, 2008 11:48 am

The post I had planned for today will have to be postponed (no pun intended). Tonight it is my turn to host book club which means I must spend my day shoveling junk out of my living room and making my house look somewhat presentable.

Why? I don’t know. Most of the members have children so they know what it’s like! Who am I trying to fool by tidying up my house? Do people really think I live neatly all the time?

Oh well. Whatever flaw of my character compels me to attempt to make my house a model of child-free, elegant perfection, then so be it. Now I am off to collect stray legos and excavate the dining room in an effort to find the surface of the table.

By the way, this month we read The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden. This was a refreshingly humorous change from the long list of depressing books we seem to have gotten into lately. If you are a gardener and want a laugh, you’d enjoy it.

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer Keshan Gunasinghe for this still-life (taken in China)

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By Mom Unplugged, January 11, 2008 11:40 am

(So sorry for the pun, but I just couldn’t help it!)

Dear Readers,

Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles….Unplugged Kids do a lot of puzzles, and we are “Puzzle Central” here at the moment. Puzzles are my 2 year-old’s latest obsession, but they have always presented a bit of a problem for me.

Those simple wooden puzzles with the tiny knobs just fascinate my little one! The problem is, that I have never figured out how to store them. They always seem to end up in a pile on the floor of mixed up pieces and debris.

You are all probably laughing kindly as you read this, shaking your head sadly and saying to yourself: “I can’t believe she doesn’t know.”

Is there some great Mom-Club puzzle organizing secret out there that I am not privy to?

I have tried the following:

- Stacking them on a shelf: Looks nice until someone wants a puzzle from the bottom and all, or at least, some of them end up tumbling to the floor.

- Stacking them in a large plastic storage box with lid: This is worse than stacking them on a shelf since they all spill inside the box creating a giant, hour long sorting exercise for me.

- Puzzle racks: Nice idea but expensive and take up a lot of room. When you have a lot of puzzles, then this is not a viable option. (Does anyone have a method of making these at home? It can’t be hard, but not being terrible handy, I haven’t really thought of an easy way.)

- Keep them on a high shelf out of reach: This is no fun, plus that means that kids must bug Mom anytime they want a puzzle. Definitely NOT a good idea.

- Baggies: Instead of keeping puzzles on a shelf with the pieces in them, take the pieces out for storage and put them in a labeled baggie that attaches to the puzzle board. This is probably my most successful storage method, but I am not using it at the moment because I don’t like fiddling with baggies and I am DETERMINED to find a better way to store the puzzles in an assembled manner.

Usually I am the one offering unasked-for advice to the whole world via this blog. Today however, I turn the tables. I am unleashing the power of the blogosphere to help me solve my puzzle-dilemma.

The challenge is this: We can send humans to the moon. But can we find an easy, affordable and tidy solution for those boxless knob puzzles? I leave it to you dear readers, to come up with a solution to my problem!

Or, do you all use that easy Mom-Club solution that I know must be out there. If so, am I worthy enough to be allowed in on the secret? Pleeese! Pretty pleeese???

Thank you.

Signed,
Puzzled in Arizona

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By Mom Unplugged, August 21, 2007 8:03 pm

This is how I feel today. In fact this is how I have felt ever since I returned from vacation two weeks ago.

My space and my mind are cluttered. The more I try to declutter, the more rapidly “stuff” accumulates there.

Today was my oldest daughter’s first day back at school. Unfortunately my son still has two more weeks at home. Without his sister, he is wandering the house like a lost soul.

I was going to send him outside on his bike and use this day to actually accomplish something. To finally sort my desk, my house, and my brain.

I tidied up a bit this morning during baby nap time. I figured that this afternoon I would tackle The-Dirty-Laundry-That-Ate-Arizona (read about it at CNN.com).

After running to the bank to deposit the one check (of three) that I was able to dig out of the clutter, I returned home to find the carpet cleaners standing in my driveway with their hands on their hips, tapping their feet, looking at their watches. I thought they were coming on Friday. Ooops!

I wildly chased my seven cats all over the house, attempting to corral them in the laundry room as the carpet cleaners watched with amusement.

Since we have about 15 square feet of non-carpeted floor in my giant carpeted house, we ended up hanging out in the driveway all afternoon because the baby would not stay put in the kitchen and wanted to “help.” I tried to make some phone calls out there, but the static from being outside on a cordless phone combined with the background noise of the carpet cleaning truck made this difficult. I even tried to call my friend Wishy for some sympathy, but she was out. We were truly unplugged.

By the time they left, it was time for a nice dinner of leftovers and then bed for the kids. First we had to FIND the beds, which had been piled with all the bits and pieces usually located on their floors.

I then tried to put some of the The-Dirty-Laundry-That-Ate-Arizona in the drier and noticed that crazy White Kitty was still hiding behind the drier, and had somehow managed to detach the drier vent pipe from the wall. I am too tired to begin moving driers and fiddling with vent pipe now.

So, here I am amidst the mental and physical rubble of my life. I type on the computer as a kitten sits next to my chair, attempting to devour a cupcake paper that she found who knows where.

My big furniture is back in place, but all the little “stuff” is pushed over onto the wood floor of my kitchen while the carpet dries. Baskets of kids’ books, baby gates, baby toys, odd chairs, a laundry basket full of dirty clothes, and several assorted pairs of shoes surround me as I lament the waste of my morning. Why bother tidying up when all that soul-satisfying order can so quickly return to chaos?

How much is in my bank account right now? Where is my agenda book that would have told me the correct day for the big carpet cleaning? Why do I have 97 already-read email messages in my Inbox? See! Clutter on the computer too!

The phone rings. Can I find it? Yes, this time, but thankfully I have four rings to try. Can I find a scrap of paper to write down a phone message? No. A pen that works? Forget it.

Help!!!

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for this photo. Click here for license information.

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By Mom Unplugged, May 23, 2007 10:56 am

I did a silly thing.

With child number three, we finally outgrew our small kitchen table. I ordered this great table with the green chairs from West Elm. The table arrived and I LOVE it! It looks fabulous in my green kitchen area and is nice and big for meals, homework, projects (clutter), etc.

But…I ordered the cushions too. The chair cushions are a lovely, minimalist white. WHAT WAS I THINKING??? They have washable covers, but do I really want to be removing cushion covers and washing them every day? I have enough daily laundry to do without adding more to it. Plus, what about spaghetti sauce? Will that come out or will I need to dye the covers red to match the stains? Maybe we should just eat white food from now on. Potatoes, pasta, milk, ice cream (vanilla)…

This reminds me of one of my pet peeves. Decorating magazines that feature “families” with cute little blonde curly-haired angels running around the immaculate garden in adorable white outfits. These families always have elegant minimalist living rooms in varying shades of white with sisal rugs. The room is completely decorated with “flea market finds” and boasts (and this is the kicker) a WHITE SLIPCOVERED SOFA on which the family greyhound is reclining comfortably.

The glamorous, yet natural-looking mother always offers up some savvy decorating wisdom, such as: “Seek out flea market pieces that have good bones.” Or, “I like to decorate with white slipcovers because you can just pull them off and throw them in the wash!” With a house full of toddlers and sofa-sleeping greyhounds, this mother (or her maid) must be washing her slipcovers five times a day.

My slipcovers would be living in my laundry room. My sisal rug would have cat barf on it (How does one clean cat vomit out of the fibers of a sisal rug anyhow? With a toothbrush?). Do Lazy-Boy recliners have “good bones?” Where do I find a flea market near me? We have garage sales, thrift stores and a “swap meet,” but unless your decorating style is “Early Salvation Army” or involves antlers, you might be a bit disappointed with the availability of elegant antique bargains where I live.

So, this brings me back to my dilemma. What do I do with white kitchen chair cushions? I am simply not as brave as those “magazine moms.” Mine are in a box in the attic to be brought out when my children are in college.

PS. I thought about cleaning off the table for the photo, but decided that it was more interesting to simply capture a moment in time from a “real mom’s” house. I hope you appreciate my honesty.

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By Mom Unplugged, March 13, 2007 7:44 am

I have a love-hate relationship with stuff. I am, by nature, a neotoma albigula, more commonly known as a “pack rat” (see photo). Yet I yearn to simplify my life by shedding all the excess.

Whenever I get stressed about mess and excess, I go on a cleaning frenzy. I tidy, I throw out, I donate. I always feel so good afterwards. Cleansing the closets equates to cleansing the soul!

However, there are always some strange things that I have trouble parting with: stuffed animals from my childhood (they are my friends, and besides, their feelings would be hurt), the swizzle stick I saved from that family vacation to Maine when I was six (the prettiest shade of red I have ever seen), a box filled with every work schedule I ever had as a flight attendant (cool places!), another box with every letter my Mom or Dad ever wrote me (sentimental attachment), old board games I plan to sell on Ebay (when I have time-ha!), etc. How can I teach frugality and simplicity to my kids when my life is filled with odd and unnecessary items?

I have a particular weakness for cardboard boxes. I like to save them. You never know when you might need one. Plus the kids play with them, and one day I will use every single one of them when I sell all my extra stuff on Ebay and make a fortune.

My husband hates my stuff, especially the boxes. He says we need to just rent a dumpster. I told him, we’ll rent a dumpster when he agrees to put at least half his precious garage junk treasures into it.

I continue to fantasize that my house will one day be transformed into a zen-like sanctuary of simplicity and spiritual living. It will look like one of those minimalist spaces you see sometimes in House Beautiful or even Architectural Digest. My furniture will all be white. My few, artfully arranged books will have matching spines in a soothing palette of neutral colors. I will have miniature zen rock gardens on my coffee table instead of the zen scattering of Cheerios which sits there now.

One day…

Oh…are you going to throw out that box? Can I have it?