Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

I know I’ve mentioned the new Laundry room a few times now, but I decided it’s important enough in my life to warrant an entire entry of it’s own. First off a huge thank you to my nextdoor neighbour Greg who is a plumber and could make all of this magic happen!  Here’s the old kitchen “laundry closet” soon to be my “utimate pantry” (this will be an upcoming post as I need your best ideas!

For the past 7 years I had been doing laundry in my kitchen, which I know is not that bad as I didn’t have to lug everything down to the basement, but to me a kitchen is for food, appliances and eating, not buzzers, mismatched socks and dryer lint!  The old laundry team- my trusty Maytags that I bought from a friend have been great machines for the past 12 years. When we decided to move things upstairs we realized that they were not going to fit in the 4×7 room, so a stacked front loading set was the answer.  I decided to look up that friend that I bought the Maytags  from all those years ago, and noticed her current machines from some Facebook photos were much older.  I decided to pay it forward and offer the machines back to her.  She was delighted!

The new Silver Blue Kenmore set has been here for about 6 weeks, but it wasn’t until about 3 weeks ago that we got everything installed.  I am in laundry bliss!  It’s amazing this new technology. Wow did I ever sound like my grandmother there, but it’s so true! Now wash cycles do seem to take longer, but the dryer totally makes up for that.  Most loads are completely dry in about 25 minutes! I think it would take me longer to walk downstairs and hang out my clothes on the clothesline than to wait for them in the dryer!

I still need to set up some sort of shelving unit on the right hand wall.  Ideally I’d like to have an area for detergent, a place to hang things to dry and a place to store empty laundry baskets. Yes they’re empty, before they always had either dirty items, or stuff that had not yet been folded or folded but not yet put away. So send me your ideas!

I have been extremely neglectful of my blog this summer so I though I’d recap in one post quickly what we’ve been up to over the past few weeks!

You may remember my rant about our “Green” van well  we finally got a “new to us” Toyota Sienna.  A friend of mine works at Toyota and I had him on the lookout for one and he delivered. We’ve been happy with it, and got it just in time for our road trip to New Hampshire. The cargo space is amazing and it only had 33,000 kms on it!

Just before leaving for New Hampshire I got a call from the Roofing Company I contracted to replace our roof and they had an opening!  So the roof was completely replaced and now we have one less house worry!  The crew from Dowd Roofing was great, they made certain that my yard as well as my neighbour’s yards were cleaner than when they arrived! I even made sure to compliment them with I went in to pay the invoice at the office.  I would highly recommend them!

Since we were putting hardwood floors into the second story of the house that meant we had to remove EVERYTHING from these rooms, which happen to be 3 bedrooms and a storage room.  While clearing out the storage room we realized that the majority of the stuff we had been holding onto we really did not use or need so I listed the stuff we didn’t need anymore on Kijiji and it sold immediately. We decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to move our laundry room upstairs!   Our nextdoor neighbour is a plumber and he did all of the work and installed ceramic floors in the new laundry room and also in the bathroom!  This now means I will get a proper pantry in my kitchen as this is where the laundry currently is.  I’m SOOOO excited, hopefully the work will be complete this week.  Here’s my new set of Front loaders arriving (yes they’re blue) and a shot of the boys room completed!

Liam and Ciaran’s new room together!

New Hampshire was a great escape of the CHAOS in the house. Our condo was fabulous as usual thanks to SkyAuction!  We had 3 levels, 2 bedrooms, and if you can believe it two sets of washer and dryers! The unfortunate part of the trip was our bout with the Flu.  We’re almost 90% sure it was the H1N1, but didn’t have a chance to confirm it.  We all got over it in about 3 days and tried to enjoy the time away even though the weather did not really cooperate.  On my Birthday we took the kids to Santa’s Village, in Jefferson, NH.  This is a great little park for younger kids (although I’m pretty certain Mackenzie really enjoyed her day there as well).  Finn was able to go on almost every ride with the exception of the rollercoaster and Kenz didn’t find things too “Babyish” !  It was a great way to spend my Birthday, I have some fond memories going as a child as well. Here’s some shots from this year and some from 1975 when I was 2 years old!

Front Entrance

Front Entrance in 1975

Andrew and the kids on the Bunny

My mom and I on the Bunny in 1975

After getting home the kids have been going to some day camps and spending some time at what we like to call Sarah’s Backyard Waterpark.  She made her own slip’n’slide that beats any store bought one and even did a Tutorial on her blog! I’ve also been working some early mornings to take the afternoons off to go to the beach or take the kids out to have a little fun. A new indoor play facility opened up and the boys just love it! They’ve also been playing some Summer Bingo to try and keep chores and learning fun this summer. The weather in July has been pitiful here in Saint John, it was the Wettest July on Record with nearly twice the normal rainfall and when it wasn’t raining the fog was as thick as pea soup.

The drive to Take Mackenzie to Camp

We’ve also been lucky enough to get out a little bit lately too.  We spent an evening at our friends place and got to listen to some great live music compliments of SJ’s Brent Mason.  He even made up some impromptu songs about the kids from tales we told earlier in the evening.  I recall one about Finn’s shenanigans getting into some drywall compound! It was really funny!  I tried out the new Moosehead Light Lime and I was surprisingly impressed, not only with the fact it matched my shirt that evening, but it tasted pretty good as well!

Brent doing his “thing”!

The next celebration I got to attend was my Dad’s Retirement Party!  After 37 years with Irving Pulp & Paper he has officially retired. My dad is an extremely hardworker and a bit of a perfectionist that has always taken pride in his work.  I’m extremely proud of him and very happy for him to be entering this new chapter of his life with his new wife Linda. Oh and Dad if you’re reading I promise to not keep you too busy with little projects around my house..lol

My Dad with my 3 “little” brothers and me!

The following weekend I got to catch up with my oldest friend of 31 years, Andrea!  She was home from Ontario and with the convenience of Facebook I was able to track her down and we went down to my old watering hole O’Leary’s Pub.  I was so great catching up with her and I hope to get together again while I’m in Toronto later in the month for work.

One thing that we hadn’t got to do was any camping!  I have had everything already to go, but every weekend it was raining!  Finally this past Saturday we did our first little camping trip to Sussex, NB.  We stayed at Town & Country Campground, and got to take the kids to the Drive-In Theatre to see Aliens in the Attic.  It was a lot of fun and now I can’t wait to do some more!  I took all of the camping gear out of the new van and put it in the green van, so that way the next time we got it was be so easy to get everything loaded and on the road.

I promise to be not so long winded in future entries and update a lot more often! Thanks for reading!

This morning I met with Professional Organizer, Elaine Shannon from Organizing Plus! for my first consultation.  The morning went great, she left me some DVD’s to watch (they can also be seen on her website http://organizingconnection.com/ ) and we toured my house room by room and devised a plan to work for our family’s lifestyle.

This meeting could not have come at a better time as we’ve been thinking about selling our house.  Last week I met with a real estate agent and I actually pulled and all-nighter and stayed up cleaning and partially decluttering.  I tweeted on Twitter periodically throughout the night whilst my followers overseas were just getting started with their work days. Then at 6:42am I received a new email that I had a new follower.  It’s always exciting when someone new follows you and immediately I checked out her Bio in her Twitter profile.  It was like Elaine was sent to me from a higher power.  I’ve been struggling for too long and was she the sign I needed.

I direct messaged her and said that her “Follow” could not have come at a better time.  She was a little confused by this and I explained that I was meeting with a real estate agent later in the day and that I would most likely be needing her services in the near future.  We messaged back and forth and then I finally called her a few days later, and she “got me” right away over the phone and we set up a time to meet!

After my meeting with the real estate agent (we’re still undecided about moving) we decided that a huge priority and something that we will greatly benefit from whether we stay or go will be replacing the dreaded dusty rose wall to wall carpets in the second story of our house with hardwood floors. Within days I had someone at the house measuring and we had a contract signed and the floors will be installed in 2 weeks!

Obviously this doesn’t give me a lot of time, but honestly I work so much better under pressure, especially if I have to have it done for someone else.  This is why I decided that hiring a professional organizer gives me that accountability and forces me to complete the tasks to report back to someone else.  I also secretly like the praise as well!

Here’s what I need to get completed before we go away late next week (yes I planned it this way, so we could be away while the floors are being installed).

1. Sign for Dumpster

2. Drop off unwanted items at the Boys & Girls Club (Elaine suggested them)

3. Remove all furniture from the second story and store in living room (except beds)

4. Remove all Carpets, underlay and staples/tacks

5.  Paint Ciaran’s room

6. Have stairs painted and stairway walls painted (already contracted some students to do this)

7. Remove all moldings,  chart and number them so it will be easier to reinstall them after the floors are in

8.  Lastly dismantle the beds and bring downstairs. Our last night before vacation we’ll camp out.

I also have 3 meetings and 2 school field trips that I’m supposed to attend next week!

Yikes! When you put it all in list form it seems like a lot. Luckily I have us 90% packed for our trip, but I do have some work deadlines that need to be completed prior to going away, so I think I’m going to have some late nights! I’ll post some photos soon!

When I told my husband I was going to be writing about his t-shirts he was less than enthused.  I then reminded him that I wrote about my underwear not that long ago and he relented a little.

I spent the day doing some crisis cleaning.  I invited Peter Walsh and his Clutter Bugs over, but they were no-shows. I girl can dream right? I find the only way I get stuff accomplished around the house lately is if I’m under pressure.  Tomorrow we have an energy advisor coming in to do  an assessment of our house to find out how we can make improvements to make our home more energy efficient.

Andrew took the boys out for the afternoon so I could work distraction free.  I am happy to say for the first time in about 4 years, my laundry is completely caught up!  In completing this milestone I also discovered that perhaps we have too many clothes.  It was tough to close the boys’ dresser drawers.  Mackenzie ran out of hangers and was complaining and when I walked into our closet I was faced with this:

One of my favourite features in our house is the walk-in closet and built-ins in it. One thing I don’t like is not being able to find a sweater or shirt when you’re looking for it, so I decided to take out the shirts and organize them.  It was a fairly easy job, I purged some things of mine I hadn’t worn for quite some time.  Then it came time to organize Andrews T-SHIRTS. I re-folded most of them and put them back neatly on the shelves.

In the end I counted up Andrew’s t-shirts and I counted 88 (EIGHTY-EIGHT!!!)  Please tell me this is not the norm?!  You see Andrew has collected these up over the years, some have come from concerts, conventions, places he’s visited and even some from his days spent in the Navy.  I will admit on occasion I’ve gone a little “Kate Gosselin” on him and ordered him to change into something a little more appropriate or into something that still fits. Here’s a few of the more unique ones I came across:

Obviously from his Bachelor Days, I don’t think this one would go over well at Parent Teacher.

From the “Star Trek”Convention he attended many years ago. Yes he’s an eternal geek.

This one fit much better in his “University/Navy Days“

So I’m wondering do your significant others have “collections“  or “memorabilia“?  How do you handle them if the get out of control, yet not seem overbearing when it’s time to purge a little?

Well the time has come to start doing some renovations on our 19 year old house.  We moved into our little uptown house in September of 2002 and it was completely move-in ready.  There was a few things that I wanted to change right away, but 3 little boys kind of got in the way of that. :)  It’s seems so long ago when Andrew, Mackenzie and I decorated her adorable little ladybug room while I was expecting Liam.

So almost 7 years have passed and one of the things that I wanted to replace right away is still lingering…the dreaded dusty rose wall to wall carpets on the second story of the house.  They are just horrible, and why anyone would choose that colour is beyond me.  The plan is to replace them with bamboo hardwood floors. Bamboo is a great eco-friendly choice as it’s considered a renewable resource as bamboo plants take only 5 - 6 years to reach maturity.  It’s also very durable and can be refinished up to 3 times.

The next project and it’s a major one is our roof. I lucked out the other day, as our nextdoor neighbours who happen to be very involved in home renos were having their roof done as well. I yelled up to their roof and they came over later to give me a quote. I’ve already called a couple of companies to get some quotes, but feel much more comfortable using this company as I know my neighbours do their homework when it comes to contractors. My neighbour is a carpenter by trade as well.

Project 3 is replacing windows.  Our house has a LOT of windows!  I love all of the natural light that we get, from our 23 windows and huge skylight, but it’s going to cost a bundle to replace all of them!  I think we may do the front of the house first, then perhaps next year start replacing some more. They are all wood-framed windows, which in our climate here of constant summer fog is not a good choice for longevity.  We will definitely be going with a vinyl framed windows.  When the contractor arrived he also filled us in on a grant we may be able to take advantage of the ecoEnergy Retrofit Program if our house qualifies.  We should know in a couple of weeks and we also taking advantage of  Efficiency NB’s -Existing Homes Energy Efficiency Upgrades Program They will subsidize the cost of an Energy Audit of your home and from the results of the Audit you may be able to take advantage of grants offered as well as interest free loans to complete the recommendations within 18 months.  This coupled with the Canadian Government’s HRTC (Home Renovation Tax Credit) it seems like 2009 is the right time to be renovating!

Here’s a shot of our place in the fall, I’m not going to risk my life trying to get a new shot from the snowbanks across the street. Yes we still have a ton of snow!  Oh and if time and money permit, we may also paint the exterior as well.  I’d like to do a totally different colour.  Many of our neighbours have chosen bright vivid colours in recent years, and I’d like to follow suite. We’re looking for colour suggestions!

                                 SIXTY SEVEN PAIR of underwear!  shhhh!  Yes I’m embarrassed to say this is me!  I have been doing so well with keeping up with the laundry lately, that I was beginning to notice, everyone’s dresser drawers were overflowing!

I decided it was time to start getting rid of the clothing that we’ve accumulated over the years and keep the stuff that the kids actually are wearing.  There’s no sense holding onto something “just in case” .  Your dresser is prime real estate in your home and if your undies drawer is overflowing with uncomfortable unmentionables it’s time to clean up that hot property!  So clean up and out I did!

First I emptied the entire drawer and divided into stuff I like and wear often and  stuff that only gets worn when the laundry gets low.  The pile started to grow and grow.  I honestly have no idea how it all fit in there or how I ever found anything in the morning.  In the end, I counted 67 pair of panties!  I held onto 20 of my most comfortable pairs of knickers.

Next was the bras… THIRTY TWO! Again I’m embarrased to say that more than half of them were nursing bras, and some of them were over 12 years old, as I know I bought them when I was nursing Mackenzie!

Ladies do yourself a favour, ditch the ill fitting ginch!

So now that I have all of these drawers out of my dresser drawers what can I do with them? I’m not going to donate them, yuck!  So any ideas for them, or should I accept defeat and let them live their resting days at the landfill?  Does anyone really want to see me wiping down my walls with my Joe Boxers?

Unknowingly it seems I just bought the “Gadget of the Year” according to UK’s Stuff Magazine.  I must say it’s pretty cool and I’m hoping it will keep my life a little more organized with all of the changes this fall.

So I’m sure you’re wondering what this little gadget is?  Well it’s an iPhone 3G!

I must say thus far, this thing is great!  It’s so much more than a phone.  I am amazed at all of the things it can do.  Andrew has had an iPod Touch for almost a year now, so I’ve been getting the feel for some of the features of the iPhone/Touch.  The big difference between the two, is that obviously the iPhone has an onboard phone (the Touch doesn’t) and the iPhone has web browsing capability via a data package or through Wi-Fi (touch only has Wi-Fi browsing).

The thing though that’s got me hooked is all of the great applications!  The Apps Store on iTunes lists them all there.  Most have a minimal fee of .99 cents some are a little more pricy, but MANY of them are FREE!   I’m too frugal to spend money on them , but I’ve downloaded a few of the free ones and they are a lot of fun.  Since we’ve been spending a lot of time in the van and sometimes getting to the school early, I added a few fun Apps for Ciaran to play.  One that he really likes a lot is called  Jirbo Match.  It’s a cute Memory Matching game with bright kid friendly charaters.  He started playing right away and got really excited when ever he made a match when the colouful star circles lit up the screen!

I must admit I liked playing it too!   Another App that Mackenzie and I like trying out was one called “Midomi Mobile”

So this App is great for when you got this tune stuck in your head, but you just can’t remember the lyrics or the name of the song.  or when perhaps when you’re in your car and a song comes on that you like but you’re unsure of the name or artist.  What the App will do is record a snippet of either you singing or humming the song, or record the song that’s playing on the radio and search  a database of tens of thousands of songs to find a match.  At first it didn’t really match anything that we knew, but as soon as we started singing ABBA it was bang on!

So that’s about all that’s new here.  I’ll update soon with pics from Andrew’s sister’s wedding  last weekend.  Sorry moms…I’ve been busy with my new toy, I mean Gadget!

where I should have just stayed in bed!  The day started off with me waking up 30 minutes late to radio static!  I even went to bed at a somewhat decent hour, but Finn aka-Mr Terror must have been playing with the dial on my clock radio.  I’ve been meaning to get a new one for a while now.  This one is over 15 years old and was free, I won it at a work golf tournament, I think it’s served it’s usefulness (most times) and can retire happily in Ciaran’s room!  More about a new clock radio later.

Miraculously, I managed to still get the kids to school on time! I got back home did a little work, and the house got quiet for a few minutes.  Quiet in this house is not a good sign.  I walked into the kitchen and literally got stuck to the kitchen floor.  From one end to the other Finn had managed to empty an entire bottle of pancake syrup all over the kitchen.  In some ways this wasn’t so bad as I’ve been putting off mopping for a few days now so this forced my hand to do it.

The rest of the morning went well, Finn really seems to be getting into a routine and went down for his nap right on schedule, however he’s been napping a lot longer than he used to and I have to wake him most days to go pick up Liam at 1:45.  We picked Liam up and he wanted to stay and play with my friend Joanne’s daughter so she watched him for the next hour while the two ‘lil redheads came with me.  It never fails when I’m in a hurry this is when I constantly get stopped by the sweet little old ladies that adore the two ‘lil redheads and have to tell me all about how their cousin twice removed had a redhead and they thought they were going to have one…well you get my drift.  Normally I always love to chat, but I was in a rush.  I got through my list and even had 15 minutes to spare, so I thought I would go into the electronic section of the grocery store as I saw they had a clock radio with an iPod docking station on sale this week.  I found it right away and went straight to the cash to pay for it.  Well it seems that there was only one customer service rep working, and he was busy with the self-serve digital photo machines.  I waited almost 10 minutes and was never acknowledged!  I then asked him if I could purchase it over in the Self-Serve Check outs (I love those things!).  NOPE!  Had to be rung in there!  Well, another 5 minutes pass and I realize I can’t wait any longer and leave it on the counter as I had to get to the school to get both Liam and Kenz.  Better go make sure CBC is programmed in for the morning, I guess I won’t be listening to my iPod just yet!

We get home and I’m excited as I had a nicely seasoned Prime Rib Roast ready to go into the oven for it’s initial 15 minutes of searing at 450 F.  A little something that I wasn’t aware of, I guess those glass casseroles don’t do so well at high temperatures.  The roast seared beautifully, but here’s where things started going downhill.  I wanted to put a little broth in the casserole and a few vidalia onions for flavor.  I poured about 3 cups of room temperature broth into the casserole, then added the onions. The next thing I know (and sorry Sarah for screaming in your ear on the phone), I hear this snapping and popping noise!  The entire 9 X 13 casserole dish shattered into a zillion pieces!!!

Yup this was just one of “Those Days”!  Off to scrub the floors again!

Here’s some shots of my stupidity:

After spending most of the last two days in the van, we decided to take it easy and check out the resorts pool and take a drive around the area to get our bearings.  As usual the pool was way too cold for me, I loike it well over 80, and this one was not even close to that.  I tried to do a little catch up reading and brought my book by Peter Walsh- “It’s All Too Much” about clutter control.  I think I’m going to jump back into the Clutter Control Bootcamp once school goes back in.

Mackenzie has been enjoying a renewed love of swimming and I think it’s due to her latest fad of “mermaids”. She’s been drawing them, reading about them and looking for movies about them.  I’m wondering if it has to do with the new Little Mermaid movie that’s coming out next week?

The Pool are at Sciota Village at Big Valley was really nice.  The pool was crystal clear, and there was a small jacuzzi and lots of lounge chairs.  Finn wasn’t overly happy with the temperature of the pool either so mainly played on the chairs and eventually found a volleyball to play with.

It seems that Liam has lost a lot of his confidence in his swimming abilities.  When we were in Florida in May, he was doing great!  Today all he did was complain and whine for water wings.  Ciaran on the other hand, was very confident yet still a little cautious, which for him is a good thing he was always the daredevil fearless one.  I’m pretty sure I’m going to enroll them both in swimming lessons this fall as their activity.  Soccer was a bust, so hopefully swimming will be better.

I know I probably need my head examined, but I just booked airfare for the 6 of us and my mom to fly to Orlando 5 days from now!

Why so last minute you ask?  Well, it’s been a really hectic school year for Mackenzie, she’s really had a hard time this year with one of her teachers and really needs a break.  We’re at the point where we may move her to another school because of this conflict, it’s really affecting the overall mood of our house.  My mom really wanted to have some time away too, she’s been missing the kids lately, so I thought what a great Mother’s Day gift! With the long weekend falling next week the kids will only miss 3 days of school so no biggie!

The funny thing is, I’m 75% packed!  When I put away some of the summer clothes last fall, I took out some of the things that Andrew and I wear and the kids wear and packed them in our suitcases!  Just need to throw in our swimsuits and underwear and we should be all set!

I personally prefer to travel more last minute, not only can you save money, but save the over analyzing and stressing over the trip.  The one things I want to accomplish before we go and getting the rest of the house organized, thank goodness for the Clutter Control Club! It has really helped me put things into perspective. For so long I would start one area of the house but never get it completed, then start another only to go back to the first area that was completely destroyed again.  I now have a task that I can complete and love seeing the before and after pics to show what I’ve accomplished!  Check out the CCC Smilebox Gallery for some motivation!

Well I better get busy, I’m off to www.disboards.com to get some tips from the fanatics over there!  Only 6 sleeps to go!