I Am A List Maker ...

... to-do lists, wish lists, long-term goals lists, grocery lists, Costco lists, coupon lists ... you name it, I probably have a list for it.  Since we moved back here from Alabama, we've not really unpacked fully and things are not as organized as I would like.  (Because in addition to making lists, I am obsessively ridiculously compulsively very organized.)   We lived in this house, moved away, moved to another house nearby, moved to another state, and then moved back to this house.  We still have boxes in the basement from before we built this house, and sometimes I will find myself looking for something, remembering exactly where it was the first time we lived here, or where it used to be in NH, or even in the other house, and yet for the life of me I can't find it in this house as it is today.  This phenomenon has been driving me crazy for almost 18 months now; I like to have a place for everything and (most) everything in its place.  I am okay with a little messy indication that yes, people live here.  I am decidedly not okay with not knowing where things are.

So, in the spirit of my 101 Things list, I recently made a list of things I need to do to this house.  No, I am not talking about painting rooms or gardening -- although those would be nice, too.  I am talking about places of unpacked-ness or clutter or disorganization that have been driving me crazy, and which won't get done until I write them down on a list and cross them off. 


For four years, we actually split our time between this house and living in Alabama, and one of the things that is most frustrating about living in two places is that you end up either with two of everything, or not knowing in which home your stuff is when you need it.  Now, in fairness, a benefit of that is that when, for example, your iron dies on you on a Friday morning and you burn a hole in your brand-new ironing board cover and you think you're going to cry or scream, you've at least got a spare iron and ironing board in the guest bedroom.  (This happened to me this weekend.  If you know me, you know that I don't go anywhere without ironing.  This is tragic, and we will be replacing the good iron this week, along with purchasing a new ironing board cover; but for three-day-weekend-laziness, the spare worked just fine!)

On the other hand, you don't need 17 bottles of the same spices.  And our spice cabinet was a MESS.  We had spices upstairs, duplicates, stuff we knew we had we couldn't find, and then we also had spices from Alabama all in a basket in the basement pantry, and no idea what was where.  Spices are expensive, too, so it bothers me to have to re-buy something that I KNOW I already have ... somewhere.


All of this is to say that ITEM NUMERO UNO on my "house" to-do list was to organize and inventory the spices, and I am happy to say that I did that yesterday and today.  WAHOO!!!

Here are some AFTER photos:

We bought this door rack at the Container Store (shhhh -- listen!  Do you hear that?!  Those are the angels singing in heaven at the mere mention of the Container Store!  Oh, how I love thee, Container Store!)  Anyway, it's okay.  We thought we'd try it and see if we liked it, and I wasn't even going to hang it, but Mick did and so we ran with it.  Works okay for the little stuff -- which is the point, really. 

There are two captions here that I can't for the life of me figure out how to remove, so I am at least filling the little boxes.

This is the second!

The inside.  No, I don't have the tiers to stack and display spices.  I can't even tell you how many times I have purchased them, decided I hated them, sold them at a yard sale, and then then re-purchased them later on.  No tiers.  Not this week, anyway.  Check back next week and see how I did with the tier-less system; things may change.

 

Finally, oh, yes....  We now have an excel spreadsheet that catalogs all of our spices alphabetically and by container description!  What, you're not as excited about this as I am?  Seriously, even Mick (when he's done laughing at me) can appreciate the utility of this little list, especially with the whole no-tiers thing we've got going on.  (And besides, this can't surprise you at all if you know me.  Really, now.  In fact, if my sister Courtney is reading this, I can almost HEAR her rolling her eyes at me.)  Can't find the Chervil?  Look it up.  And yes, before you ask, I also have photos of every spice.  I was going to put the photo next to the name so you'd know what the jar looked like, but that was going to be a formatting nightmare, and I have kids to go play with.

I haven't shared my giant "house to-do" list, but item #1 is crossed off!  Yippeeeeeeee!

--Jen

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