Amen, FlyLady Kelly

In one of the bazillion emails I received today from my friends over at FlyLady.net, the sage words of advice below were found. While I'm not hosting Thanksgiving this year (or any, thus far), she was talking directly to me because that's how I generally operate whenever I host an event at my house. Check it out and see if she's talking to you. If so, heed her words: she may just be an angel sent to save your sanity.

Dear Friends:

It is time for another Holiday Reality Check!! During this time of
year when we are all running around trying to make this the most
perfect and best Holiday ever, we lose a sense of reality and start
drowning in perfectionism! Even when we promise ourselves it won't
happen this year!

The subject of today's Holiday Reality Check is about Thanksgiving
Dinner. Now there may be some of you that don't prepare a
Thanksgiving meal but trust me you can still relate to this subject
even if you are not celebrating Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Dinner..... ahhh the Turkey will be golden and juicy, we
will obsess about it being just right! The stuffing will be perfectly
cooked, not soggy or overdone. The mashed potatoes will be creamy and
light, no lumps allowed. Our tables will be set with our best dishes
and oh wait, candles... yes candles. Mental note: have to go buy
candles. If the dining room is flanked in candlelight then no one
will notice the stain on the carpet or the crack in the wall. Hmmm
maybe I should paint that wall. It is only one wall with a crack, so
maybe if I paint that wall in a complimentary color, I won't have to
paint all the walls. OH! If I paint the wall a soft cream, I could
get a new valance for the window. Ay yi yi the window, it really
needs to be cleaned. I guess I need to clean that first. STOP!!!
HALT!! Put the brakes on! Ok, what you just read was how a SHE mind
thinks. We start off thinking about what we want for our dinner and
then somewhere we take a left turn and just keep on going. Before you
know it, it will be the night before your grand dinner and you will be
on a ladder painting the dining room!!! You will be standing on a
ladder with hungry kids, a husband that is shaking his head wondering
why this has to be done now and then it will hit you!! OH NO! The
turkey is still in the freezer!

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN!!

Let me give it to you straight right here and now! There are three
more days before Thanksgiving, the only thing you need to focus on now
is making sure you have all of the groceries you need and getting your
home ready as in company ready NOT REDECORATING!! If you have not
done it by now, it is time to let it go and focus on what is truly
important. Gathering your loved ones around you and enjoying the
holiday together with good food and good company. Look around you...
if you think that you are not ready for your guests to come and visit
your home on Thursday then go to www.FlyLady.net , go to the table of
contents and click on the link for Crisis Cleaning. Check your
pantry, freezer and refrigerator BEFORE you go to the grocery store.
Do not try and mentally challenge yourself into a brain freeze trying
to remember if you have cornstarch at home. Write down what you need
to complete your shopping and get it done before Wednesday. Do not
attempt to go to the grocery store Wednesday night before Thanksgiving
and get caught in the crowds with all those people that will certainly
have lost their sense of humor and holiday cheer.

Do not look forward to a perfect day, look forward to a FLYing
Thanksgiving!

Love,
Kelly

Watch Out for Deadly Comet

If you haven't already heard of EWG.org, it's a website sponsored by the Environmental Working Group. They do studies and perform tests on a myriad of consumable products in order to gauge those products' toxicity. While I'm not religious about utilizing the site, I have checked out children's sunscreen and various cosmetics. I think you'd be surprised to see how many of the products you use are chockful of harmful chemicals. I know I was a little shocked at the levels in my Origins products considering that particular line is supposedly natural. But that's a topic for another day.

Since I'm on EWG's email list, I get periodic notices alerting me to the dangers of some product or another. Today's email's subject was regarding cleaning supplies that may be used at home or in schools. EWG tested some popular and some green cleaning supplies for safety and Comet, which is at this very moment sitting under my kitchen sink, was the worst of the worst.

Which is saying something since, according to EWG, "nearly any chemical can legally be used in cleaners, and ingredient lists are not required on labels."

Comet was found to release 143 air contaminants into the air and contain 7 chemicals that may cause cancer. And I thought it was just good for scrubbing my kitchen sink. Which goes to prove that while ignorance is bliss, it could also potentially kill you.

Suffice it to say, I immediately became interested in some more green ways to clean my sink and found a lot of great resources thanks to Mom Go Green. According to a commenter on the site, you can simply use baking soda and water. Another person provided this link to a printable fold-out card full of green cleaning ideas (you have to scroll down a bit to the Household Cleaners section). EarthEasy has a lot of great ideas for making your own cleaning products for less while EWG offers some practical tips for cleaning more safely in your home.

One of my favorite cleaning gurus, Linda Cobb, the Queen of Clean, has always promoted the use of such simple, safe household products like baking soda and vinegar to clean. And my friend, Christine, uses vinegar to clean everything, including dusting the furniture. It smells like eggs at first, but it does fade. In addition to being safer, these things are a lot cheaper than the more dangeous options out there. So it's better for you all around.

Whoops – I'm a Moron

No surprise there. But I was wrong about getting dumped from Working Moms Against Guilt's blogroll – turns out I was never on it (insert nervous chuckle here). I'm listed as one of their friends (and hopefully I'll stay there if they forgive my dopiness). I kind of thought that's where I was, but didn't see that list on the right. Turns out it's on the left. Whoops. That's what I get for keeping up with the blog via FeedBlitz – no longer familiar with the layout.

But all things considered, I'm kind of glad I thought I got the boot because, if all goes well, it'll have lit a fire under my butt to get off it and get this blog going.

Thanks again, WMAG, for all your support. Even if I am a moron.

If You Want Something Done...

Forget "right". There are just a gazallion things around this house that need doing one way or another. Here's an example: After over a year of waiting for my dear husband, Rick, to put the hardware back on our windows, I finally finished the last one tonight – at which time it occurred to me that anyone could have come in through it at any time. Not a great feeling.

I also finally cleaned paint off the windows the a fore to mentioned husband also was going to take care of. It kind of made me laugh to find out that, after all this time, the biggest splotches were actually dry wall mud which wiped off fairly easily; I had been holding out for more Goof Off, which I finally picked up last week.

Speaking of Goof Off, I found its warning label a little unsettling: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Nice, eh? There were more, but I won't get into them. I will say that if you're a huffer, I'd avoid experimenting with this one.

I've used this, I guess you'd call it, poison before but must not have read the label because I don't think I would have loved it so much I'd want to bring this highly dangerous substance into my home again. On the other hand, when using it tonight, I didn't wear gloves at first, which is asinine considering we have two ginormous boxes from Sam's Club down in our basement thanks to my Dad's warnings during the Avian Flu scare of 2007, I believe it was.

But enough doom and gloom. Back to how totally awesome I am.

As I sit here typing this, still a little heady from the Goof Off fumes (should have opened the doors) and a little stinky from lack of a shower thus far (though it is still on tonight's agenda), my sink is shiny. My front porch is also pretty swank, thanks to following Fly Lady's mission for today. I even cleaned our porch light glass of bugs.

Plus, I finally threw away the grout bag Rick left laying (or is it lying?) in our landscaping, which made me sad because it was so awesome and also because I'll have to buy another one for the couple of grout lines that were missed in our kitchen remodel (a year ago – I can't begin to tell you how long my To Do list is).

Additionally, I cleaned out a cooler full of slimy water, ruined condiments and various beverages that someone, eh hem, left out on the porch for like the third time in a row. You owe me, sweetheart.

All in all, I had a full, productive day. I'm beat. So I guess I'll go grab that shower and wait for my canonization.

Fifteen Minute Friday Night

One of the Fly Lady's mantras is you can do anything for 15 minutes. Tonight, I put it into practice while baking some of my Schwan's Monster Mania Cookies. The cookies are supposed to bake for 19-20 minutes, but I burnt them the first time I believe due to the fact that I used the small, upper over of my double range oven – very close quarters. So I figured I'd try 15 minutes and I set the timer. Then it hit me:

I should spend those 15 minutes cleaning out my freezer since some stuff fell out (not for the first time) when I went to find the cookies.

It's not very easy to tell the difference between the before and after pictures, but believe you me, it's there. Like items are grouped together, the interior has been wiped down and I tossed out some leftover smoothies - FYI, they don't defrost well.

So even though it's kind of a lame thing to do on a Friday night, it's one thing off my usually ever-growing To Do list, which is definitely a (baby) step in the right direction.

CHAOS Central

So I mentioned the fact that I just started following FlyLady.net to try and help me get a handle on the condition of my home. I'm an admitted victim of CHAOS, her term for Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. It is so true and I was reminded of it again today when I unexpectedly dropped in on my friend, Sylvia.

She had no idea Ian and I were stopping by because her phone went right to voice mail and that red blinking light didn't pique her interest enough to listen to the message. A normal person probably wouldn't have just charged on over there anyway, but I felt pretty sure she'd be home.

What astounded me when we get there, though, was how clean her house was – and she's recovering from 2 knee replacement surgeries.

She's not the only person I know who keeps a house like this. I just have no idea in the world how she/they does/do it. They may as well be speaking another language that's how foreign the whole concept is to me.

That isn't to say I don't aspire to be like that, I just have no idea how. Hopefully, that will all soon change.

To demonstrate how I'm the polar opposite of Sylvia and others like her, I'll relay this story from last week. It was my turn to host the monthly Girls' Night and I was serving pumpkin soup, meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I made the soup the day before (good thing, because it took me 3 hours just to get the meat out of the pumpkins) and really felt like I was cleaning as I went the day of when making the other items. And really, it doesn't sound like I was making all that much.

But when my friends started to arrive, my kitchen was a complete and total disaster. I should have taken a picture of it...

I could tell my friend, Suzi, was having a hard time wrapping her head around how it even got that way. She was just dying to figure out a way to get it all under control. I felt bad for her, and me. Why am I like this? What can I do to change it? Here's hoping the answers come quickly because I am seriously getting overwhelmed and stressed out by the way things currently are.

Mashed Faux-tatoes

Tonight's dinner was revolving around meatloaf again. I'd bought enough ingredients a week ago for a double batch, finally remembered to fire up the second batch on Saturday and froze most of it, but kept two mini loaves out. Ate the first one Sunday and figured I'd make the second tonight.

Long story long, my philosophy has always been: what's a meatloaf without mashed potatoes? Sadly, we were about to find out. Used the last of my taters on Sunday and forgot that I meant to hit the weekly farm sale up at the church Monday afternoon.

What I did remember is that I'd heard somewhere you could mash cauliflower and it taste almost like the real thing. As luck would have it, we had a head in the crisper, so I figured I'd give it a try. I'd always wanted to. After reading a bunch of different recipes, I decided to just wing it using some of the ingredients I'd read and see what happened.

I started out by steaming the cauliflower until tender. After draining, I returned the florets to the hot pot, added a few slices of butter and creamed with a hand mixer. Right away, I knew this little experiment was not going to turn out anything like real mashed potatoes, but I was committed, so carried on. I added a little milk, salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, white pepper, about an ounce of cream cheese and shredded parm.

The end product was a'right. After thinking about it, I decided I didn't like the taste of the parm. Rick said he thought that was the only thing really giving it flavor. He also said it was very different, but not bad, just different. Ian ate it, so I guess that says something positive.

I suppose if I ever make it again, I may try the Ruby Tuesday recipe that's floating around the internet. Not sure if it's the real deal, nor have I ever had theirs, that I know of, but it seems to get high praise. And I'd try to mashing it all up in the food processor as some recipes suggested to see if I could get a smoother consistency. Anyone else out there ever tried making mashed cauliflower? If so, what did you think?

My Sink Is Officially Shiny

After about 5 hours in the works (including about a 2 hour hiatus for an exercise class and lunch), my sink is officially shiny, the first order of business for a person who's making the commitment to join the Fly Lady in a quest for cleanliness, order and peace of mind. So I guess this makes me an official FlyBaby (someone who aspires to be as awesomely clean and organized as the Fly Lady herself).

Please follow the link above for more detailed instructions, but basically, shining your sink entails filling up one side at a time with hot water (which seemed like a collosal waste of water, but you supposedly only need to do this once), adding a cup of bleach (don't pour it in while the sink is filling up like I did; the closer the water level gets to the rim, the more splashing occurs) and letting it sit for an hour.

Fly Lady says you can use tongs to get the stopper out – did not come close to working for me – or manually remove some of the water so you can stick your gloved hand in to pull the plug. Once the water is drained, rinse well. If you have a stainless steel sink like mine, she recommends scrubbing it down with a scouring pad, then rinsing well.

Everybody then uses Ajax or Comet or something similar to clean out the sink next. From my own personal experience, I'd suggest finishing the bleach portion of the exercise on both sides before moving to the next step on either side. Trust me on this.

After the scouring, rinse thoroughly. Be sure to clean other areas of the sink at this time, too, like the faucet, around the basin, etc. Once all that's rinsed off, spray the tub(s) of your sink with Windex or some similar glass cleaner to shine it up. I'm the type that needs super explicit instructions at every step of the way, which aren't always available, so I imagine it's okay to spray it on top of the water that's leftover from the rinsing (though I'd really love to know for sure, Fly Lady).

The final step is drying your sink out, which you're also supposed to do every time you use your sink. You're supposed to keep a clean dishtowel handy every day for this express purpose. Seems kind of silly, but it sure does look nice. I hope I keep it up because I could see how this one simple thing could help keep you motivated throughout the house.

According to the Fly Lady, you should shine your sink every night before you go to bed as part of your nighttime routine. As I mentioned earlier, you don't need to do the whole fill the sink with water and bleach, scour, scrub, etc. My impression is you just spray it with windex and dry it after you've gotten all your dish washing and drying done. That way, a shiny clean sink greets you in the morning and gets your day off to a good start. What I'm not sure of is whether or not you wipe the window cleaner off with the same towel you dry the water with. Details, people, I need 'em.

Anyway, by looking at my before and after pix, you have to admit, it is quite the dramatic effect. The real test will be to see if we can (all) keep it that way.

Fast Food, For Your Freezer

I'd never heard of Schwan's until my friend, Kimbie, sent an email letting a bunch of her gal pals know that the home delivery food service company was offering a free $9.99 meal to new customers. (My apologies to my other gal pals to whom I failed to forward this message – didn't cross my mind, I'm afraid.)

As I'm not one to pass up a free meal, and I have a penchant for trying new things, not to mention a deep-seated pleasure in spending my sweetie's hard-earned money, I decided to give it a try. Based on suggestions from other gals in Kimbie's group, I opted for the Tamales, though I didn't stop there.

Why not try some other things, I reasoned. Delivery was no cost, and I had that $10 that I'd saved to spend. So I also ordered Fiesta Lime Chicken, which we had tonight, and Monster Mania frozen cookie dough.

After a few botched delivery attempts/miscommunication between parties, our food finally arrived about two weeks ago, about 6 weeks after placing my initial order. (Schwan's delivers to your area on the same day every two weeks.)

Upon checking out the goods, I was disappointed in the size of the tamales portion, though rereading the description just now, I see they tell you up front there are only 6 in the bag, and supposedly you can feed 6 people on those. That remains to be seen, but I'll let you know.

We fired up some of the Monster cookies right away, and they were, as expected, tasty. Unfortunately, I think they got overcooked in the top part of my double range oven. I always defer to that smaller area for time/energy/money savings, but I'm starting to think it's not the best place for the more delicate items I prepare.

Tonight, I made the Lime Chicken. It was tasty but, in my opinion, too small a serving. Even though it was advertised as a 2-person meal, I still think there could have been more food to share and it was kind of short on chicken. We'll see what happens with those Tamales, but as of now, I'm not too sold on the concept.

In spite of the delivery issues, the customer service has been great. And the food has been good. But the items are a little pricey for the amount you get. I know I have to consider the fact that it's all delivered straight to my door, but I feel like, with a little more effort, I get more value out of a Dream Dinners type of establishment. I'll probably wait for the next big offer before trying it again.

Anyone else ever used it? What are your thoughts?