Feeling Virtuous

 

You all know how much I like to cook. I made chicken stock the other night. When I roast a chicken I cut out the back and flatten it out. I save the backs, necks and wing tips in a bag in the freezer until I have enough to make stock. This time I actually bought a small chicken and cut it up before I threw it in the stockpot with potatoes, carrots, onions, mushrooms, parsley, a parsnip or two and some salt and peppercorns. I pulled out the chicken breasts after about half an hour, so I have nice meat for sandwiches and salads for my lunches. Then I let the rest of it simmer for about four hours. I put it in these plastic containers, and then stuck them out on the porch to cool down overnight. I knew the fat would rise to the top and congeal, and the next morning I brought them in the house, skimmed off the fat, put the covers on and labelled them, and then put most of them in the freezer.

I felt very virtuous. After I did that I sat down and did my taxes, and have a refund coming. Lucky me.

I ordered a stack of fat quarter packs from the Portsmouth Fabric Company. They arrived and I ran them through the washer and dryer and ironed them while I "watched" TV. My housework is done and the bills are paid, so on Sunday I get to do whatever I want. 

Before & After

It's hard to put your fabric away when you don't have any place to put it. My bookshelf is stuffed, as you can see.

It was pretty clear the only thing to do was to move the little scrap bins. But where? Both of these bookshelves were stuffed too.

But when I looked more closely at this one, I realized the shelves were full of old music CD's.

So I cleared the bookshelf and everything on it, and piled the CD's in a big bin.

Then I dusted and washed the bookshelf, adjusted the shelves...

and moved the little bins over.

All the mugs that had stored things like pens, tools, notepads and other stuff were dusty, so I put them all in the dishwasher and ran it. This is the stuff that was in the cups and on the shelves.

Then I consolidated all my extra business cards and notebooks, and arranged things on the bottom shelf. Those things were mostly on the bottom shelf before I cleaned it off.

After the dishwasher had finished its cycle (btw, the best piece of cleaning advice I ever saw is this: If it fits, put it in the dishwasher) I put all the pins, pushpins, measuring tapes, lint cleaners, pencils, pens, tools and other doodads back in their places. It all looked great, until I looked over at the other bookshelf.

Sigh.

So OF COURSE I had to clean and reorganize that one too.

This looks So Much Better, and now I have another shelf in the stash for fabric, so instead of sewing, which I am not interested in doing right now anyway, I can finish putting away the fabric that's all over hell.