And the winner of the Swiffer is...

Last week  I told you  that Proctor and Gamble sent a few nice products to my home in multiples! Two Swiffer Wet Jets and Mr. Clean Magic Erasers now make cleaning our home a lot easier

Thanks for commenting on facebook or the post about your interest in these products. The winner of  this give away is LeAnne!  She's a great mom and  deserves a fun treat like this. Thanks Swiffer and Mr. Clean and thanks readers for your interest in these products!

Swiffer Wetjet /Mr. Clean New Years Day Give-Away

Happy New Year!  We travelled for the holidays and I didn't have access to the Internet, hence the break from Living Consciously. Hope your holidays were wonderful! Right before we headed out for vacation, two great products arrived in the mail.

I love to organize. I don't love to clean. And since these were two  cleaning products,  I was really glad  to have a reason to clean. Procter and Gamble were very generous and sent all of this:

Product #1:
Just recently, my friend told me how much she loved her Swiffer and I admitted I was still a mop and bucket girl. Not saying I like being a mop and bucket girl.  I actually hate it, but I had never ventured out. I was so glad they sent two-one for me to try and tell you about and one to GIVE AWAY!!!

The fact sheet that accompanies the product refers to it as: "Swiffer WetJet Extra Power Pad: With the Scrubbing power of Mr. Clean Magic Eraser."

The assembly was a breeze. Three rods easily connect together, to create the Swiffer. It needs 4 AA batteries.

The kit comes with two pads like this...

that easily attach to the Swiffer.

The starter kit includes cleaning solution that easily snaps into the device.

That was it. It was very easy, so I got to work in the kitchen.

There is a button on  the handle and when you you push it, the cleaner squirts out the front of the Swiffer. Initially, I over-squirted....but then I got the hang of it.

Here's a little section of the floor: before and after.

And this is what the pad looked like when I was done.  I was genuinely surprised at how dirty my floor was. It didn't look that dirty! Apparently, the mop and bucket is not getting that up!

You just throw that guy away and replace with a new pad the next time you use your Swiffer.

I guess the best endorsement is that I immediately said to my husband, "I am throwing away the mop today." It really was so easy and quick. I am REALLY excited to share this product with one of you.

But don't forget about product #2. The Magic Eraser-select a size. There are six magic erasers in the box. I love these things. The front of our steps are painted white and get scuffed up by our shoes.
I worked on them today and here's the before and after:

Sorry the pictures are so dark-unless it is a sunny day our stairwell is a little dark. You can see how the scuffs disappeared though!  I also got some scuffs off some beige-colored walls  because it doesn't mess with your paint color. I also cleaned the bathtub with it. This thing does it all!


Comment on the blog or on Facebook if you interested in having these two products delivered to you. I will pick a winner on Monday!

$149.00 value giveaway-Ipad/Iphone Recharge station

  Just in time for Christmas, Kanex sent this to one of you!

This is awesome. I opened the box,  checked it out and got really excited for one of you. Then, carefully put it back in the box ready to send out to a lucky reader.  I spared you and didn't take bad pictures of the product because the video is all you need to watch. Sit back and watch it-it is only a minute of your time. Trust me, you will want this.

 http://www.kanexlive.com/sydnee


I was sent a WHITE Sydnee and it does hold up to 4 iPads or IOS devices.  (iPads, iPhones, iPads) Sydnee's  sleek design will look beautiful on your desk. I love organizational gear and this  one is AWESOME. It even comes with a 3 pack of USB charging cables. If you are always looking for your devices, you'll have no problem again with Sydnee in your home.

Comment on the blog or the Facebook link and I will pick a winner at random on December 17th.

Good luck!!!

Get it together quickly-fuel reward points expire this weekend



photo credit

Christmas will be here in 18 days, which meals you have 17 days to figure it all out. It's go time.


1. Finish up making the list of gifts you will be buying this Christmas.

2. Specifically name the stores where you plan to purchase these items.

3. Get to Kroger before 4x the fuel points on gift cards expire and purchase the gift cards for those stores. (Click here if you are not sure what I am talking about)

4. You'll find that you have accumulated a bunch of fuel points. If you spend $100 in gift cards, you'll save $.40 a gallon at the tank. You can maximize your savings by taking more than one car to the tank and not turning off the tank between fill ups. Kroger allows up to 35 gallons during a single purchase. Bring your gas tanks as well. If you were to buy $100 in gift cards, you'll save $.40 at the tank and that would be a $14.00 savings at the tank if you were to benefit from the 35 gallon fill up.


Here is the link to the gift cards which Kroger states they sell in their stores.

And you'll feel better your list is done. Consider this the deadline-you'll save money and enjoy Christmas a little more knowing the shopping is done a bit early.

Organizing requires four healthy limbs

I had hip surgery just short of 3 weeks ago. As you can imagine, it sure slows down any chance you have to organize something. I can only walk with crutches and if you have ever had crutches, that means you can't carry so much as a glass of water. I have a backpack that I use to move things from one room to another. It's pretty ridiculous. I want to watch TV and drink water so I have get to get a bottle of water out of the fridge and put it in my backpack in order to carry it to the den. And by the way, buying bottled water is NOT MY THING. Ugh. But for now, it will have to do and I am grateful for the bottled water.

Organizing just about anything around my house is out of the question, except for one thing. For a person who has a high need to organize things all the time, this is what I have been reduced to:

I guess it's good for my soul. Sometimes a body just needs to slow down and this is my time. 

Weed out Wednesday

Sometimes you stumble upon a solution to a "house process" that really works. It doesn't need tweaking and you realize....this is it. I won't ever change it. That's how I feel about our donation box.
There is this narrow space between our basement steps and the wall. I got my hands on this tall skinny cardboard box and it fits perfectly there.

Whenever I decide something is donation- bound,  I immediately open the door to the basement and toss the item into the box. It's deep, it's dark and it's forgotten. When the box gets full, I just dump it out and begin itemizing the list so we can deduct it on the taxes.

Itemize and bag it up.  Easy Peezy.

It feels so good to see that bagged up and ready for the car.  Four grocery bags of stuff that will eventually show up in a new home for someone else to enjoy.  Where is your donation box?

I am not Cinderella

These babies sat on our street from Thursday to Monday.

Two oversized containers used for construction. They took up  5-6 parking spots.

The  sign ON THE CONTAINERS reads, "Do not place GARBAGE in the container."  The reason garbage should not be placed there is because they do not have lids. I repeat: NO LIDS.

And yet....there is what I have been looking at since Friday night.

Thank you so much for inviting every rat, possum, stray cat, bird and squirrel that lives in the entire city of Richmond to our street. 

I am not Cinderella, so I do not do mice and birds.

Let this be a lesson to everyone. Containerize appropriately.

Organizing baby

One of the perks of  writing a blog is the free stuff sent to you if you commit to reviewing a product. Recently, I was sent two products from PRK Products, Inc: the Universal Baby Food Jar Organizer and Universal Baby Bottle/Sippy Cup Organizer.

I'll start with the Baby Food Jar Organizer. I gotta say, the box is pretty convincing because the pictures on the box are fabulous. It boasts that it can store up to 16 jars of ALL stages of food.
I opened the box to find some assembly required, but for good reason. You can assemble your jar organizer to hold EITHER Stage 1 & 2 foods OR Stage 3. Pretty fabulous.

Those panels in the bag build the sides of the unit.

Here is a side view--it comes with those little feet that give it a slant, so the jars slide down, when you remove one.

Here is the look from my cabinet. Sorry, I have no baby so I have no jars.  My assessment---I love it.


Second item:  the Baby Bottle and Sippy Cup Organizer.  It is a two part deal, one basket to hold the nipples/tops etc as well as the actual bottle/cup holder. No assembly required for either.

I had one sippy cup leftover from my days as a foster parent and I tried it in the Sippy cup Organizer.
It didn't fit!! I was so surprised. And then, I realized....USER ERROR.

The unit actually expands depending on the size of your cups/bottle. I just had to push one button on the top of the unit and it released the unit to expand to the size I needed. Brilliant.  The box boasts that it is compatible with over 30 brands of bottles and cups. Again, no baby = no bottles. I'll take their word for it.

Here is a picture of the box, showing how the unit can fit in your fridge.

These products were apparently created by a mother of triplets. That is a good enough endorsement for me. All I can say is that I had every intention of giving this away to blog readers after I wrote about it, but I decided against it.

I am going to keep it and pray that one day I will have babies who  need a little organization.

the kitchen is closed



photo credit





One of the best feelings in the world is that moment when you have unloaded the dishwasher, wiped down all the counters,  the lunches are packed and you hit the light switch to "off" as you exit the kitchen. I often think..."kitchen is closed." It's not really closed. I am being delusional. My husband could walk in at anytime and mess up a plate and a glass, but what can I say...I dream big.







I actually think that if I ever have a gaggle of kids that I might actually make and hang a "Kitchen is Closed" sign, because I don't love being in the kitchen. Sometimes when I am hungry I think about all the things that are healthy (or leaning toward healthy) that I can eat that do not require messing up any part of the kitchen.

Here are some of mine:

-bananas
-apples
-grapes (One day my friend's husband opened the refrigerator to find a colander of washed grapes and he delightfully said "Awesome, grapes ready to eat." --as if grapes are not always ready to eat. Hilarious. We ate them off the vine of the back fence my entire childhood and nobody died.)
-string cheese
-microwave popcorn
-almonds/nuts
-ice cream on a stick
-any kind of protein bar/granola bar


Have you considered making a list of those kinds of things that you can typically find in your house and let your family know those are free to partake of when the kitchen is closed? No more spending your life being a short-order cook.

Non-essentials being put to good use





photo credit



In Richmond VA, there is a wonderful organization called CARITAS.  Their website states that CARITAS is "a faith response that provides for the most basic needs of people who are suffering---food and shelter, home furnishings, and employment".

My sweet friend works for a part of this organization called the CARITAS Furniture Bank. This means that ANYONE can donate their furniture to the furniture bank and it is housed in a warehouse. Then, if you are a person who is coming out of homelessness (a shelter for example) you can go to the CARITAS Furniture Bank and "shop".  It is a well-designed system of provision, in that different size families receive different things. For example, a family that consist of one adult and two children-may get a voucher for one dining table, four chairs, one couch, a coffee table, three beds, and three dressers...so on an so one. A bigger family would recieve more based on their family size. The formulas are very specific and the "shopping trip" is need based.  Wouldn't it be nice if more of our shopping trips were need based?

However, those who donate to the furniture bank don't always know that and they graciously give all that they have-outdoor furniture, chandiliers, bean bags, wine racks etc. Because CARITAS wants to provide for a person's basic needs, CARITAS staff take these items which they call "non-essentials" and sell them at the CARITAS Indoor Yard Sale several times a year. The proceeds go right back into the operation that help support this non-profit.

I love everything about this idea.  So....check it out. (Rain or shine-it's an indoor yardsale)

When:

Friday, June 29 10am-4pm

Saturday, June 30 9am-1pm

Where:

CARITAS Furniture Bank
1125 E Commerce Rd
Richmond VA 23224

Future Sales:
July 27/28
August 24/25
Sept 28/29

 

$9.00 on the line

I assist a client with some personal assistant needs who lives in a community with a Homeowner's Association. Regularly, I open his mail and find a letter from the HOA. I have never seen anything like it. He violates some rule almost weekly. "Your grass is brown" (I guess so, since it never rains in Richmond). Or, "Your front porch needs a fresh coat of paint"  (His porch is stained wood, so that really means the TWO small risers that lead to his front door).

Clearly, a clothes line is out of the question. They might call 9-1-1 if he put one of those up in his back yard.


I used to live in a neighborhood like that. No clothesline for me either. Now, I live in the city and pretty much anything goes. But here is the problem:

This is the size of our back yard. Not ideal for a permanent clothesline.

 

So, my dad (before I was married) came up with the pefect solution:

 

A retractable clothesline! The line coils up when not in use, but I can pull out the line whenever I need it. He attached the opposing hook to a tree on the other side of our property.

And so now sometimes our back patio looks like this:

For city living or for pulling one over on your HOA. Whatever you need. This retractable clothesline  costs all of $9.00.

It must be Tuesday

I got married almost 6 months ago and couldn't be happier about who I married. He is all kinds of wonderful. Prior to tying the knot, I essentially lived alone for well over a decade with the exception of the occasional roommate who needed a place to land for a few months and very cute 2 year old who settled in for about a year and a half. All my roommates (Michelle, Becca, Anna, and Jessica) including the little one, Alfonso, were great roommates for lots of reasons and it didn't hurt a bit they they were also organized. I kind of like that. You've probably noticed.  Actually, I don't care so much if you are organized until it starts to seep into my space. Then, I care.

So, now I share a home with my husband who is  not neurotic normal in this area. He actually is very loving in that sometimes he gently challenges me with the hard questions about whether something needs to be done right then. It really does help slow me down, reflect and turn off auto pilot. However, at the end of the day, I am just made this way--to love order.  I make no apologies for it and most of the time, feel like it serves our marriage. He would agree. But, he serves our marriage too. Here's just one example that happened several weeks ago.

Back Story: Here's a glimpse of our dining room.

Here is a glimpse of our dining room on a recent Tuesday night. How do I know that it is Tuesday night? Because the window is showing me darkness and there are two of Joe's suit jackets on the back of the dining room chairs.

Monday: deposit suit jacket here at the end of the work day
Tuesday: deposit suit jacket here at the end of the work day
and so it goes...

Reflect on the rest of the room. Ordered beyond reason, really. And then the suit jackets. It's funny because as much as I don't love it, I kind of do. I love that I am married and suit jackets are a part of my life. I love that my neuroses has not driven him to be nervous in our home about where his stuff lands. I am blessed to remember that he has a great job that he loves. Mostly, it just reminds me that this our OUR house and no longer mine. Something I have been waiting to come to pass for years.

But to add icing to the cake--this will make you adore him:

I asked Joe on a Thursday night if he wanted to have dinner inside or out. He looked into the dining room and saw the four suit jackets (4=Thursday, you know the drill) and thought for a minute. Then, he turned to me and in a loud whisper pointed to the dining room and said, "Not in there, they are having a board meeting." 

Then I just die laughing and nothing else really matters.

(I asked him if the board meeting might be over by the time my parents visited that weekend and he said he thought it would.)

And that's what it's all about

Not the hokey pokey.

I started writing this blog with one intention. That intention is outlined in the "About Me" section of the blog and also cut and pasted here:

"....Living consciously is about living with an awareness of what you have, what you need and love, avoiding wastefulness and being a good steward of your money so that you can be charitable. This is not a blog about recycling or zero-waste living, although I think those things are great. I will offer ideas from my work as a personal assistant and trade tips from working in the home organization business....We get one life and I want to live it consciously."

And so, examples of that concept are the things that stir my soul, but obviously cannot happen everyday. I'd like to think that the everyday decisions that we make in this area set  us up for opportunities to "show up" when it is time.

I posted last week about an upcoming yard sale that was scheduled for this past Saturday. The intent was to raise money to bring an orphan home from China. "Adoption yard sales" are becoming more popular and some friends  pulled it off like nobody's business. You can read about that here. (Parts one and two)

"Be aware of what you have so you can be charitable." Charitable so Charlie can come be with his family. Twenty five hundred dollars ($2500) was raised to help bring an orphan home just because  lots of people took a break from their everyday and made a conscious decision about their stuff.

It's life changing. Just ask Charlie when you meet him.

Weed Out Wednesday

Weed out Wednesday was a regular post before this blog petered out I started planning our wedding. I realized this last week when I was reminded of a friend's yard sale. Her family is having a yard sale to raise money to bring home their orphan son. If you live in Richmond, you should check it out. And if you can't, maybe it will inspire you to donate to someone you know who is having a yard sale for the same reason. I can't think of a better reason to get rid of your stuff.

I love the idea of giving something away in order to offer someone a home.  It's easy to fall into the thinking that Americans can provide more for orphans. And yes, in many cases, we have better health care, educational resources, healthy food options etc. But it's just as easy to fall into the thinking that an orphan needs my stuff-toys/books/new clothes/his own room etc- to make his life better. And that, we know, is some faulty thinking on our part. So, this yardsale reminds me that in this land of consumers, provision for another human being isn't found in the stuff. Because if it were, there would be no yardsale. Rather, there would be a clothes drive/toy drive to get Charlie home.

Charlie needs a family and his family will "sell the farm" to make sure he gets here safely and quickly.

So this Wednesday, in honor of Charlie, I can't think of a better reason for you to take 15 minutes and  find 15 things for your "give away box" to give to the next orphan yard sale you hear about.

Here's  a picture of our box that we keep to the right of the basement steps all year long. If we can't get this to Charlie's family by Saturday, I'll get it to the next family)

And if you live in Richmond and want to visit this great yardsale family, by all means.

(Here's the craigslist link for more info)

organizing children

My 9-year old nephew plays baseball. Watching him play sports is one of the huge joys and anxiety producers of my life. There is something to say about coaches. They can get a kid to do just about anything. (I learned the other day that that is partly because coaches just make you run at the end of practice if you haven't listened to them.)  Moms...try the running thing.

Anyway...this was hanging in the dugout the other day and I LOVED it.

The board is magnetized and those name plates just get moved around by the coaches. It tells the kids what position they play in the field for the upcoming inning, as well as lists their batting order. They have had a bunch of games this year and  yet I had never noticed this ingenious creation. It had always puzzled me as to why the boys hadn't been bombarding the coaches with questions. Everyone just seemed to know the deal, instinctively. Why I thought a bunch of 8-9 year old boys had good instincts was beyond me, but there was no other explanation, so I just went with it.

Nope. It was the magnetic board all along. Someone needed to hook the Little Rascals up with a  magnetic board and there would have been a lot less explosions.

The grammy goes to

We pack our lunches most everyday. This is the amount of Tupperware I removed from the dishwasher yesterday.

Exactly TWO people live in my house.

Ridiculous.

I passionately believe that this is the kind of thing for which they should give Grammys:

Done and done.

(Until it starts all over again tomorrow. )

P.S. If you feel like you need to save old Cool Whip containers etc when you are sending someone away with food from your home (very hospitable of you, by the way), just store those somewhere else. They just tend to clutter up your everyday Tupperware storage area.

More about the crime scene

I promised a few more pictures of our crime scene recently organized basement. I consider myself a semi-minimalist, always wanting to minimize more and so all of this still feels like a lot of stuff. But Christmas decorations and my husband's sporting equipment have to go somewhere.  Pictures from high school and college that I have meticulously organized in albums are important to save but don't need to jam up  the office bookshelves. Enter  "the Rubbermaid bin".   You will see evidence of the label maker in action. All in all...it's functional and that is all that matters. We didn't spend any money organizing the basement...just used bins we had. It is not magazine worthy but I am pretty sure Real Simple isn't calling this week to set up their next photo shoot.

That large black monstrosity is an old boiler no longer in use and was taking up a ton of space. I got a quote to see how much it would  cost to remove it and I can't remember exactly but I think it was like $3 million. So, my DAD built this awesome shelf above it that holds so much stuff. In general, dads rock.  Handy dads are the bomb.

   

There is just little part to finish. My laundry basket is being held hostage. These are items collected from the basement that need to be put away in my husbands closet/office.

But the basement.

Hallelujah.

The Crime Scene that yielded fifty bucks

I have been MIA lately and the action has been taking place in our basement. Getting married at the very end of 2011 meant merging two fully furnished homes into one. Not so easy peezy. Planning a wedding + going to work everyday = "put it in the basement until we have more time". We finally tackled the basement and it took more than a minute.

Here WAS just one little corner of the basement. You'd think it was a crime scene.

Those are Christmas Lights hanging  in the middle of the picture. The ROCKY box is our collection of Rocky movies. Nooooo....just some hiking boots. The rest...who knows. Miracle Grow next to some tape next to a gas tank next to a sewing machine. Good times.

But here is the "after" of that little corner of the world:

And yes, that filing cabinet WAS in the "before" picture.

Here is where I was trying to do laundry:

Opening the top of the washer presented a problem.

But now....



(Someone should vacuum that rug.) Pay no attention to our window treatments   packing paper on the window. It makes me feel better that the mean people will stay out.

Every bin is labeled. (More pictures to come). And we can find anything we need in 10 seconds. If you know me, you would be shocked to know the basement looked like this (Sorry, Kim D). Life just took over...like it does... but now we are back to the races. And the best part is that I found all these treasures from my husband's house that I would have eventually bought. Thing like:

-a pair of scissors for the butcher block

-a huge box of yard bags

-Febreeze

-awesome unused sponges

-etc etc

He also found $50.00. That should excite me a little more than the scissors, but somehow it doesn't.

Organize something in your house and I bet the event will save you some money. We found a bag of these metal plate things that you use to connect two boards. My husband bought them for $.97 a piece at Lowes. He still had the receipt. It was from 2005. I returned them but because the stock number had changed, they gave us the price they sell them for now....$1.11 for each.  I think there were 13. He made a $1.82 profit for holding onto those things for 7 years. I think that is a better return than the bank is paying on my money market.