A few goodies...

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I'm in "Whip-My-Home-Into-Shape" mode.

It's not that my home is in disarray.... but it kinda is.

See, neither Superman nor I actually is a neat person.  I consider myself one notch better than him because I at least notice the mess and wish it were clean.  But that's really not much better, because neither one of us likes to take actual steps to improve the state of the house.  So we don't.

The dining room has (for about six months now) been labeled "The garage sale room"  because its where we are storing all the things we had planned to sell in an eventual garage sale.  Not gonna happen.

I know the dining room seems an odd choice as the designated "garage-sale room"  but we don't have a basement, we don't have an upstairs, we've never been inside our attic (well, I haven't) and the dining room is currently not being used.  (Dining furniture is EXPENSIVE!)

The garage-sale-room being the obvious WORST zone in the house... the other rooms tie for a close second.  Mail litters all surfaces of the kitchen... clothing all surfaces of the bedroom... weights and exercise equipment all surfaces of the living room... pollen all surfaces of the screened-in-porch.  And I will spare you the details of our bathroom.  You don't want to know what litters the surfaces there.  (It might be worse than the garage-sale-room.)

So I've given myself motivation to whip this place into shape.  My cousin's baby shower.  This joyous event will be open to our entire church and hosted at my very own home.  I will also be doing the cake!  You will definitely be reading a post about that.

Job #1:  Get rid of the junk in the garage sale room.  Find storage for that which is not junk but looks like junk because it belongs in a dining room with furniture.  (i.e. Christmas dishes.)

Job #2:  Pollen eradication from screened-in-porch.

Job #3:  Pick up all this CRAP!

Job #4:  Our bathroom.  (This will probably happen first... so ignore the numbers.)

I won't bore you with that list anymore... but I do want to show you some of my recent purchases!  They will help me reach my goal of a shower-ready home!

                     First off... this is a totally awesome cupcake tree display thing!  I've long researched, compared, reviewed, and considered getting one of these.  I'm so glad to now have one.

(Also note that I still don't have a camera and have therefore had to be very creative and use pictures found online.)

And this is for easy portability and fridge-storage.  My attempts at refrigerating cupcakes before events have been frustrating.  You take up TONS of space trying to fit your sheet pans in there.  

This thing stacks!

Now for the cleaning/organizational things.

I got this little beauty for storing our chargers and outdoor plates.  (Yes, we have outdoor eating plates.   And no patio table to use them on.  And they were cluttering up my kitchen floor.)

This push broom is for Step #2.   Pollen Eradication.

And THIS is for my car.  I will not allow my new car to fall into the trap Superman's has fallen into.  I will not.

Its a mini-vac... in case you can't tell.

And these we bought from a nice young man who came to our house. 

I've always heard great things about Cutco knives.  And I've been doing without anything serrated in my kitchen all year.  Not doable for the serious bread-baker.

I'd like to point out that among the impressive features of these knives... They can cut through leather with but one single sawing motion.  They cut through rope.  They take years to dull and have a forever guarantee.  They have an easy-grip super-safe handle.  They resist germs.  They are dishwasher safe!

And there you have it!  All things pictured (except perhaps the knives) will be utilized repeatedly over the next few weeks in an effort to clean up the mess we've made.  Wish us well.