messy

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Thursday Randomosity: Hot Sauce and Gravel Edition

We are cartwheeling down the last grassy hills of summer – exhilarated, off-kilter, trying to soak up as much summertime fun and relaxation as possible before school begins (Fifth grade. FIFTH. GRADE. Eeep.) while also dealing with all the chaos of moving. My mind is going in a million different directions, which calls for some Randomosity.

We finally told our neighbors that we were moving. I don’t know why we waited, but we did. But we thought we should give people a heads up before the realtor stuck the for sale sign in our yard. The ones we told were a gratifying mix of sad that we are leaving and excited for us. One neighbor seemed genuinely distraught, but when I told her that we’ll be moving to a neighborhood where there are other ten-year-olds on all sides, she visibly relaxed. “Oh, I’m so glad,” she told me. “Every time a house on our block went up for sale, I used to pray that the new family would have someone her age to play with.” I found this so touching – that she would not just think about Carla, but that she would go out of her way to pray for her. This is the kind of neighbors we have. This is why I have such mixed feelings about moving away.

Our house has never looked better. We cleaned and tidied our house to the hilt for the realtor photos and it looks SO GOOD. It has never looked this good. It is impossible to keep this way. Poor Carla. She has been enjoying a TON of screen time because she can’t do anything to make a mess. So much of our stuff has been put away for the sake of tidiness, too. Our realtor specified that we needed to clear off the counters as much as possible, so in the kitchen I had to hide my tea kettle away along with the paper towel holder and the dish scraper and the hand towels. In the bathrooms, we have to put all the shower items (shampoo, conditioner, face wash, razors) under the sinks and swap out our normal towels for “pretty towels” (which I interpreted to mean The Guest Towels, because I am not buying new towels for the sake of aesthetics). All of our chargers have been relegated to the nightstand drawers. Makes normal day-to-day living a little awkward. 

Never have I been so thankful for my zooper. It is getting SUCH a workout. Potential buyers seem to completely ignore the sign we put up inside the front door that says “please remove your shoes or wear these foot covers.” I can tell because none of the shoe covers have been used (although I suppose people could be removing their shoes). And there is constantly grass and bits of dirt and other debris all over the floor. I am zooping all the time. Plus, I shed CONSTANTLY. I knew this about myself, but now that I have to tidy everything ALL THE TIME I am newly aware of how hairs seem to leap off of my skull every time I move. Thank goodness that my beloved zooper seems to have no problem sucking up the rogue hairs. 

It is also good at sucking up gravel. Yes, gravel. I picked up our paper towel holder (similar to this one, if you want to picture what it looks like) to move it from the counter into the pantry where all the shameful things go and the bottom sort of dropped out. Later, when I told my husband what happened, he said, “Oh, that’s probably because I dropped it the other day.” The weird thing was: it was full of gravel. GRAVEL. Like, that’s the weight that the manufacturers used to fill the base. I guess it makes a sort of sense? Maybe gravel isn’t particularly expensive, and maybe it’s easy to access, and it is heavy. But what a weird thing to put inside a paper towel holder, amirite?!?!?! And the gravel got all over my kitchen. Everywhere. Fifteen minutes before Carla and I were supposed to leave for a showing. 

One of Carla’s favorite birthday gifts was a dinosaur mask. I can’t remember if I told you this already? If so, you will just smile and nod through the retelling while you think of other things, yes? My husband and I got her these Therzinosaurus claws because she had specifically requested them. I guess a friend of hers had them? And she was excited to have them, but kept asking, “What about the mask?” (This friend apparently had the mask, too.) So we went to Target and she was able to spend some birthday money on the matching mask. The mask and claws come as a set, too; not sure why we didn’t get her the whole set to begin with. To be completely honest with you, I thought it was kind of a dumb present. But she asked for it, and I’m not sure how much longer she will want to play with toys, so we indulged the request. And I was WRONG. It is an awesome gift. The mask attaches to your face in such a way that the jaws open when the wearer’s jaws open. And the claws go on over top of the hands, so your fingers are still free to do things. It is VERY cool and I think any dinosaur loving kiddo would love it. 

I need to find a new favorite hot sauce. There has been a sriracha shortage for more than a year now, and I ordered a few bottles of my favorite sriracha sauce (Huy Fong) every few months while they were still available online, hoping to wait out the weather conditions that devastated chili crops and stopped production. But I am now on my last bottle. I am finally coming to terms with the fact that I will need to find a new favorite hot sauce. It’s sad, because it is really the perfect hot sauce. Sriracha is by far my most-used condiment. I eat it on tacos and salads and put it in stir fry sauce. This doesn’t convey just how dependent I am on sriracha sauce. We eat tacos pretty regularly, and I cannot eat a taco without hot sauce. Hot sauce is an essential ingredient. Although I haven’t been looking very hard for a replacement, I have tried some store brands of sriracha with no luck. Now that I’m on my last bottle of the real thing, I need to step up my search. I think that I need something that is not pretending to be sriracha.  El Yucateco is my go-to hot sauce for enchiladas and nachos, but it’s too intense for me to put on tacos. Cholula is wonderful on burritos and black beans and rice, but I don’t like the way it tastes with ground beef. The Ortega and Old El Paso taco sauces are okay in a pinch, but not my favorite. Before sriracha came into my life, I used La Victoria hot sauce on my tacos. I suppose I could return to that, even though it’s not as spicy. But maybe this is an opportunity to try NEW hot sauces. I have read a few “There’s a sriracha shortage, try these alternatives” articles and none of them has been helpful. (It turns out that I am extremely choosy about hot sauce. Chile crisp and sambal oelek are textured, not smooth; Tabasco is thin and vinegary. None of these are adequate sriracha substitutes, even if they have their place.) But hot sauce is expensive and it’s hard to know where to start. Do you have a favorite hot sauce? 

What non-essential-for-nutrition-or-life food item, if suddenly unavailable, would leave you feeling most bereft? Sriracha is mine, I think. My husband would probably choose peanut butter. My daughter would probably say ketchup – I don’t think she could live without ketchup. Do you have something you use ALL the time, or love so much that you would feel lost without it?

Speaking of food, as I usually am, I have reached the stage of packing where food preparation is becoming slightly tricky. I have been trying to pack away non-essentials, and have already put together several boxes of kitchen items. This came back to bite me this week when I tried to make paprikas and realized that I had packed the potato peeler. Hmm. Why did you do that, Past Suzanne? True, this is probably the one meal (besides Thanksgiving) that requires a potato peeler, but still. So I had to peel potatoes with a knife and it was not nearly so easy. Then I decided I was going to make muffins for my writing group. (One writing friend has moved to the city for the summer, so my regular writing buddy and I invited him to join us.) But… I had already packed away the muffin tins. THEN I looked for Carla’s dinosaur taco holder for taco night, and… I had already packed it. Womp womp. I wonder what essential non-essential cooking item I will need and be unable to use next. 

My hair is driving me bonkers. It’s been nearly four months since I last had my hair colored, and boy can you tell. The grey is really insidious, creeping in around my ears and in patches at the crown of my head. The worst part, for me, is that the way the grey grows in, it makes me look like I am balding. My hair parts naturally on the right side of my head, kind of at the outer edge of my right eyebrow. But the hair on the bottom side of the part is so pale that it looks like scalp. I don’t think it IS scalp, although it could be that my hair is also quite thin in that spot (gulp!), but whatever is going on, it doesn’t look good. I have been increasingly self-conscious in photos, to the point that I have begun parting my hair on the other side of my head. This is WEIRD. It looks weird, it feels weird. My hair flips up where it shouldn’t. But at least I look less bald, I guess. 

In other aging news, I have a new wrinkle. Wrinkle is kind of a charming word – that bright cheery i, the fun tongue-trip of nkle. But the object it refers to is less charming. This one is kind of like a double frown that bridges the inner corner of each eye over the top of my nose. I do not care for it. Also, I can’t figure out what facial expression is CAUSING it. If I knew what face I was making to develop this wrinkle, I would STOP DOING IT. I have sort of decided that it has something to do with my daily 3:00-5:00 am wakeup, because the wrinkle sometimes stretches over my eyelids into the portion that is swollen from lack of sleep. But I can’t correct THAT, lo how I’ve tried.

My husband and I have discovered a sad truth: we should have done a lot of these home improvements EARLIER, so we could ENJOY THEM. We have been enlisting a lot of professional help to get our home into selling shape, but we have also pulled out the old DIY artillery as well. He and I are GOOD at DIYing, and by “he and I” I mean that I am good at persuading him we can do a thing and then he is good at executing it. (DIY projects require a lot of skills that I lack, like patience and the ability to paint/cut/hang a straight line.) (I am, however, extremely good at driving to Home Depot and buying supplies.) One thing we did this weekend was to replace nearly all of our window screens. I am embarrassed to tell you the state of our screens, but they were ROUGH. And I have no idea why we never even EXPLORED the option of fixing them. Never! I mean, four or five years ago when I was determined to replace our windows, I guess I figured we’d replace the screens too… but beyond that, I never once thought about them except to lament the fact that if we wanted cool, fresh air in our bedroom at night we would also have to welcome a few bugs. The thing is, replacing screens is SUPER EASY. And inexpensive! I have gotten many, many quotes for screen replacement and they range from $42 per screen on the high end to $25 per screen on the low end. But we did it ourselves and it took maybe three hours and about $60 to replace seven screens. This has been the case for EVERY IMPROVEMENT we have done. Why did we wait until the literal last minute?!? When we move into the new house, I have vowed – to my husband, and now publicly – that we will fix things right away, not let them fester for a decade or two until we plan to move out. 

Do companies ever listen to their own hold music? This question is brought to you by being on hold for 26 minutes with the electric company as I waited for a human to help me transfer our service to the new house. My local hospital system has a pretty decent hold line – music, regularly interrupted by brief ads for critical health services, like “make sure you get your colonoscopy!” or “regular skin checks are a great way to identify skin cancer early!” That kind of thing. But the electric company’s hold music is NOT good. It vacillated wildly between normal volume and way too loud. When it got loud, it was full of static. And the “song” that kept playing on repeat would stop abruptly as though a customer service agent were finally going to answer my call, and then start playing again from the beginning. 

Have I mentioned how much I hate the idea of strangers TOUCHING my THINGS? Every time we get home after realtor showings, I feel like I should Lysol every possible surface people might have touched. Yuck. 

Okay, that’s it for now I think. What’s on your mind today?

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Crafting a Craft Room Part 2

One of Carla’s favorite pastimes is crafting. This is a blanket term that, for her, includes without being limited to:

  • Drawing
  • Painting
  • Making things with yarn
  • Using hot glue to make shapes/structures
  • Using a 3-D pen to make shapes/structures
  • Building things out of paper or foam
  • Cutting up paper into tiny confetti bits for unknown purposes
  • Diamond painting
  • Coloring
  • Gluing pieces of cardboard together
  • Transforming pens, paper towel rolls, dowels and other items with string, gems, glitter, foam, etc.
  • Making Barbie furniture
  • Making clothing for various stuffed animals
  • Cutting paper into snowflake shapes
  • Origami
  • Sculpting animals out of playdough or clay
  • Making things out of yarn
  • Sewing scraps of fabric together, to make clothing or purses or stuffed animals

She is extremely creative and derives a lot of joy from crafting. While I might prefer that she were to make things that had some utility, I certainly don’t want to restrict her creative mind. The big problem is that her creations tend to take up a huge amount of space. 

So our solution was to create a craft space just for her in the basement. (Slide the image below to see the before and after.)

Based on wonderful suggestions from you, my husband and I went to Home Depot and found a door to use as a craft table. Home Depot has a surprising (to me) variety of doors, and we went with one that was flat, unstained, unfinished, and unadorned in any way. It didn’t even have a hole for a doorknob. Just a flat slab of wood. Best of all, it was fairly inexpensive – around $85. (We are comparing the cost of the door to the cost of an actual table.)

We allowed Carla to choose a paint color for the door, and then the three of us painted it. 

We already owned a six-cube organizer shelving unit, so we bought a second one. Then we bought fabric bins to put inside some of the cubes. Once the paint was dry, we set the door horizontally across the shelving units.

My favorite thing is this spinning desktop organizer, which holds a bunch of pens and scissors and paperclips.

The “table” is nice and tall, and big enough to hold A LOT of crafts. We set up Carla’s Cricut machine on one side, put the spinning desktop organizer on the other side, and filled the shelving unit bins with construction paper and foam and painting supplies.

Over time, we have added additional shelving units and fabric bins, and lots of plastic bins and smaller shelving units.

It is a very well-used space. 

Two things that I think we still need, but haven’t yet figured out:

  1. Some sort of plastic floor mat. I would love to protect the carpet. But we have only hit roadblocks when trying to find solutions. We originally thought we could get one of those stiff plastic mats that you can put under a desk so that your chair wheels don’t get stuck in the carpet. But to find one that is large enough is prohibitively expensive. We considered finding some heavy plastic sheeting, like the kind you put down when you paint… but I’m not sure that would be sturdy enough for daily use, or how we would affix it well enough to the carpet. We then looked into buying a cheap rug that we could put under the desk… but my main concern about that is that it might create a tripping hazard in the basement. Plus, the cheapest rugs at Home Depot have raw edges, and I think they would fray and fall apart pretty quickly… but I have no idea how to resolve that. So for now, we deal with occasional paint and perpetual glitter on the carpet.
  • A chair. I think Carla would benefit from having a drafting stool of some sort. She says it’s tiring for her to have to stand when she’s drawing, and I get that. Sometimes, this means that she moves the crafting onto the floor, which I do not like. Maybe a stool of some sort would make using the actual table all the time more appealing. I don’t think she would use a stool all the time… but that’s fine. Then again, the need isn’t so pressing that I’ve done more than idle googling. 

The space is usable and Carla loves it and uses it regularly. Overall, it is a success.

My primary complaint about this space is that it is a craftastrophe 95% of the time. It is a horrific mess that encompasses the top of the table and the space underneath and bleeds into the surrounding areas. (Toggle for the mess if you dare.)

The problem is that no matter how many organizational bins and shelves and baskets you buy, they only work if you use them. And my kid doesn’t use them. I have no idea how to help her with this. One of our family mantras is that everything should have a space, and when you are done with something, it needs to return to its space. But that… doesn’t happen. 

Either Carla is in the middle of a project and doesn’t want to put it away…

Or she forgets to put it away…

Or she doesn’t know where the item’s “home” is (or, worse, it doesn’t really HAVE a “home”)…

Or she has used the storage bin for some alternate purpose… (This one really annoys me. For instance, we have this little case that has a bunch of separate spaces for small items, like pom poms or gems or paper clips or whatever, and she had removed everything that should be in it and replaced those things with individual small chunks of clay that had since dried out. This kind of “using a storage unit as a toy” is frequent and drives me NUTS.)

I am not sure how to reframe things for Carla so that she understands the how and the why of putting things away… or so that she sees the bins and shelves as Storage Only and not props in her elaborate imaginary scenarios.

If we ever buy another house, my dream is that we dedicate an entire room to Carla’s crafting. A room with our makeshift table, and tons of built-in shelving units that are all labeled and stocked with everything she needs. A room that has a door behind which we can shut the mess. 

But this is a dream, not reality. 

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Santa’s Little Helper: Crafting a Craft Room Part 1

I hope you had a wonderful, delicious Thanksgiving and celebrated exactly the way you wanted to!

If you are looking for a little post-prandial distraction, might I ask you to join me in contemplating the execution of a Home Project, with potentially satisfying results? You don’t have to spend a dollar or move a single piece of furniture, you can simply sit back, sip your beverage of choice, pass judgment on my plans and life choices, and perhaps offer advice! Win win!

Carla has been asking, for months, for a “rilly big box full of all craft stuf.” That is a direct quote from her letter to Santa.

Carla is a crafter extraordinaire. She makes anything and everything, from miniature furniture to fishing rods and fish to tiny clay animals to elaborate seascape scenes to clothing for her stuffed animals and more. We have a lot of crafting supplies in our home already, and very little space to store it all, and my little craft enthusiast is constantly coming up with new ideas.

My husband and I decided that we wanted to help Santa fulfill Carla’s wish… but we needed a bigger plan than just a “rilly big box full of craft stuf.” The big box is part 2. Part 1 is carving out a crafting space.

Right now, crafting takes place on the kitchen table:

This is how my kitchen table looks at least 75% of the time. Craft mat, glue gun, craft detritus.

Or on the dining room floor:

This is what Carla hears when I ask her to “put her crafts away.” Deep sigh.

Short of moving to a home with a dedicated crafting room, we have to make do with what we have. And what we currently have makes me twitchy and claustrophobic.

We do have a decent-size basement, and my husband and I discussed repurposing the space for crafting.

Right now, the basement has several purposes. The left third is for exercise and gaming and TV watching; we have a treadmill, a recumbent bike, a couch, and a TV over there. It’s pretty full.

The right two thirds has a dual toys/music function. As in, it holds a huge amount of Carla’s toys (Barbies galore, dinosaurs, building sets) but it is also where we keep the electric piano and my husband’s electric drum kit.

(Our dream house needs to have a dedicated music room, too, apparently.)

I hope you are enjoying our walls. The color scheme… grows on you.

My idea was to move/break down the piano and drum kit, since they are so rarely used. My husband agreed to moving the piano, but he wants to keep the drum kit. (Sigh. The drum kit takes up so much more room than the piano. But we take what we can get.)

And then we use the space freed up to create a crafting space for Carla.

The dinosaur is envisioning a crafting table right here where the piano is. Perhaps we will find a new home for the dehumidifier.

While we already have the Expedit (which holds games and some puzzles and all the Make Your Own [XYZ]! kits that Carla has yet to put together, along with many that she HAS put together but have enough ingredients for more rounds) (I am going to go through and RUTHLESSLY TOSS some of the latter and RUTHLESSLY DONATE some of the former), a four-cube organizer that holds our DVDs and my husband’s video game collection, and a six-cube organizer for Carla’s LEGOs, we need dedicated craft storage and we need some sort of table.

We bought this with the sole intention of using it to relocate all the LEGO that have taken over my living room. Currently, the LEGO collection is still upstairs, strewn all over my hearth. In the meantime, the Barbies are making good use of the space.

Santa, in addition to the “rilly big box full of craft stuf” has assured us he will bring additional storage. I think he is planning on another six-cube shelf organizer and fabric bins.

Santa will not be bringing a table, although that’s a critical element of this plan. My husband and I have been on the hunt, but it’s difficult to find anything that doesn’t cost one million dollars. We decided we can wait to figure out the table solution until after Christmas. But that doesn’t mean I am not already thinking about a table.

When Carla crafts on the kitchen table, she takes up approximately half of the space.

Don’t get me wrong – given time, her crafting essentials eventually migrate to all four corners of the table and spill over the edges onto the floor, but she seems to be able to make do with just half. That’s 32” by 42”, so it would be IDEAL to find a table that is three feet by four feet. A table that folds, so we can slide it up against the wall. A table that has a smooth, untextured top for drawing. A table that is NOT one million dollars. (I would love love LOVE to spend less than $50, but that seems like a pipe dream. Maybe I should be aiming for under $100.)

Because I am a genius, I suggested that maybe all we needed was a giant board! Then we could help Carla move the not-yet-installed shelf and the current LEGO storage shelf into the middle of the basement, and put the board across the tops of both shelving units, and VOILA! instant table!

My husband doesn’t think that we will be able to find a board of the right size, and, even if we did, he is picturing something rough with jagged edges. So I need to think on/research this idea a bit more. I still think it is a genius solution, although that’s dependent on boards a) coming in the right size and b) also not costing one million dollars.

Because crafting is so important to Carla, and because it causes SUCH chaos in my home, I am pretty motivated to find a solution.

To help keep everything organized, we will also get a desktop carousel.

And I can think of dozens of uses for this craft keeper, which has 16 little plastic containers for pom-poms, stickers, glue sticks, beads, etc. etc. etc., so I think we’ll get one of these, too.  

Plus, it’s so rainbow-y!

The only other thing I can think of to complete this craft space is perhaps some sort of plastic carpet mat. You know, to protect the carpet from all sort of crafting debris.

I’m sure there are other things we will find we need, once this craft space is realized. But for now I am focused on the minimum needed to make it functional, and also on keeping it under one million dollars.

P.S. My plans include getting rid of Carla’s dress-up closet, which is the purple structure that lives to the left of the Expedit. I can’t remember the last time she played dress up. (“Halloween” she told me when I asked her. And before that? “Last Halloween.” This proves my point.) She laments the loss of the mirror, but it’s a pretty crummy mirror and we can easily get a mirror and affix it to her bedroom door.

I really wish we could get rid of the drum kit.

I also think it’s time to get rid of the Giant Bear. I impulse-bought this bear at Costco many years ago, and it achieved the surprise and delight I’d imagined when I spotted it. But now it mainly lives on one of the couches in the basement, rendering the couch unusable by humans. Or it endures various forms of torture inflicted by Carla. It has sagged a bit in its old age, as though the stuffing has been crushed or redistributed, so it is now much less fluffy than it was when we first brought it home. I think it’s time to say goodbye.

He is putting on a good front, but he is clearly SO miserable. This is not the life he wanted for himself.

If you were designing a crafting space, given what you now know about our available resources, is there anything I’ve missed or overlooked?