FlyLady Helps You Clean Your House and Your Life While You're At It

I've posted here about how to clean house, periodically sharing tips I've learned.  I get how frustrating this can be for many of us.

It's hard for me.  Just plain hard.  In fact, housekeeping can be flat out overwhelming sometimes.  Especially when I'm on a deadline.  I just don't see the mess, really I don't, because my head is filled with the research or the writing or the editing.  I just don't SEE it.  Then the deadline is met and I relax and suddenly I look around, and wow.  I need a break and I'm surrounded by mess.

I hate this.

I remember reading on The Bloggess about how she suffers from mental illness and one of her red flags that she may be about to have a bad episode (here in the South, we call them a "spell"), is that her vision narrows.  Like she has blinders on her eyes.

What I experience is something like that -- I'm busy, I'm buzzing along and my head is happy with thinking, and I don't register that the dishes need washing or that the porch needs sweeping.  It's just not there for me.

However, living in mess is definitely real and I hate it.  It's major no fun to come out of the waters of creating something good, all ready to wallow and relax, only to find that you're in a messy environment.

Portion Control - Good for Your Budget and Your Health

It's amazing to me when I compare the set of dainty cups and saucers that I have in the cupboard with the big, beautiful blue coffee mugs that I got as a gift last month.  The mugs seem standard size for today; the cups and saucers remind me of my dad, drinking coffee with the paper when I was very little.  I'm probably dating myself here, but what the heck.

Plates and Cups Got Bigger!

What I've discovered from this comparison is that not only have serving sizes in our restaurants increased over the past few decades, but the actual dishware that we buy has increased in size, too.  Wow.  Plates are bigger, glasses are bigger, salad bowls are bigger, ... you get the idea.

It amazes me how subtlely we're all encouraged to buy more, more, more ....

We buy more, we eat more, we toss more.  So, learning portion control not only helps our budget, and our waistline, it also helps the environment.  How much should we eat?  On the web, I found this great video that not only explains what proper portion size should be, it also has a great example of how dishes have expanded in size.  Less that 3 minutes, it's worth your time to watch.

Video - How to Make a Solar Oven

and here's a short version of a nice homemade solar oven on wheels ...