Friday, January 25, 2013

Decisions, Decisions

I have an important decision to make this weekend - which project to budget for. I have a gazillion things I would like to get done and I am continuously finding myself saying - "but it would be nice to have this done first...", thereby making it impossible to know where to start.

So, I have decided to use cost as means of elimination. Makes sense, right? I mean, if I had a gajillion dollars then I could do them all at once - but if I had a gajillion dollars I would also be having someone doing it for me while I sipped a Mai Tai on a cruise ship in the Carribean. Alas, that is not the case.

In an effort to save me an entire day of walking though my home and looking at all the projects and cost analyzing all of them I know I have to pare it down to the ones that are driving me the battiest.

Option One: The pantry/kitchen cabinet situation. We have a really nice kitchen and really good sized pantry but with a family of 10, 8 of them being food devouring little devils, my kitchen is a fiasco. That's alot of dishes, a lot of pans (because I always have to use two of everything to cook enough at once), and a whole lotta food (that is used weekly). I have had the food in the pantry and the pots, pans, bakeware etc in the cabinets - this drove me nuts because I could never FIT all those pots, pans and bakewares in properly and it was a race to shut the door before it all came a-tumbling. Then there was the issue of the garbage can - there is NO place in our kitchen (open concept) to put that stinkin thing and it gets used often and quickly (again, 10 people use it, I remind you). So food in pantry with garbage can would drive me bonkers, because, let's face it, I am not raising 8 Michaels Jordans - so they all inevitably MISS the garbage can. ICK!

So I swapped it up - I put all the food in the cabinets and all the other stuff into the pantry. Now I put things a certain way, and they fit that way well - but I am the ONLY one who puts things that way. The nanny doesn't, the husband doesn't, the kids don't - so, inevitably, none of it fits, again. I also have the cabinets organized so evertyhing is somewhat easy to find - cans in one cabinet, breakfast items and koolaid in another, rices, noodles, crackers in one, and then snack inspired stuff in one - makes sense right? Sounds simple? Well, apparently, not - because, according to the husband- he can never find anything. Seriously? Ok - so back to the original design...maybe.

I have been doing some research and finding some pretty interesting storage solutions for the pots, pans, bakeware being in the cabinets; and the food back into the pantry. I have to do a cost analysis on this material though. It adds up when you consider the quantity of items that I have. Then, I start to think well it would be neat if I could set some storage for my lesser used stuff up in the garage - but then I would have to re-organize the garage - and buy stuff for that - and there goes more "but it would be nice..." vicious circle again!

Option Two: The laundry room and all the piles of clothes. Do you have any idea how much clothing 10 people make in one day? In two days, a week? I am a working mother - so doing laundry daily is not a reality. I end up getting to the point where in order to get into the laundry room I have to shove the door open and climb over the mound of clothing blocking the door. I end up doing marathon laundry sessions for two days and have piles of folded clothing all over my bedroom floor under the picture window. It's enevitable and it has been happening for six exhausting  months now. I have three laundry baskets and one tri-laundry sorter, a bookshelve and the washer and dryer. Plus the shelf above the washer and dryer. And it is just NOT working. So I dreamed up a laundry room. It's in my head and it will work like a charm - I just need to buy the material and build it. The weather has been biting big donkey ding dongs so I really need to be able to build this stuff in the garage, except, oh wait - there is no room in the garage to do this. What I really need to do it is straighten up that garage so I have the center area to build things in! There it goes again - a daily problem that is backed up by a bigger problem.

Option Three: The Harry Potter closet and the amasses of shoes and bookpacks that wind up unceremoniously dumped in front of the kitchen bar - grrrr. The Harry Potter closet is affectionaly named so because of it's location under the stairwell. When we moved in it already had hooks and some shelving and it really is the perfect set up for 8 little hooks, skinny benches and 8 little bins for shoes! I was all gung-ho and took down then hooks and shelves, bought me some paint and was ready to paint it and set it all up - but somehow it began getting used as the storage closet for all the painting/cleaning supplies from moving in and painting the living room/kitchen/dining room. And guess what, six months later - it still is - only now we have added a basket full of winter hats and vaccumm cleaner. WTH. So I need to get in there and clean it out - paint it, put the hooks up and build the benches. Pretty simple. However, that means I have to put the stuff in the garage and my, oh, my it would be nice to have that garage cleaned up first - which brings me full circle again.

So, why don't I just clean up the garage first? It's such a huge project that I am afraid I might burn myself out and it will be months before I even get the gumption to get back at it again! And, in order to clean that out I really need to do something with those 9 bikes laying around in and outside of my garage!!

So, what I really need to do first is build the bike rack out PVC pipe that I dreamed up. It's quick, it's cheap, and it will provide a huge initial step.

So, what I really just did is talked my way - well actually talked you - through the brain fog in my head to get down to what my first project really actually needs to be.

The bike rack.

Don't you just love blogging?

Fuzzy headed,

Terri

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