Because Sometimes if I Take a Picture of It, I Can See it.

This sorry excuse for the surface of a counter has been accumulating for over a month.


Like I was telling you a few days ago, October was just one of those Mammoth Months. In which I run from here to there and do this thing and that whereby neglecting most household chores and rapidly lose geography in my kitchen. The counter top in my kitchen is a fairly accurate barometer of the chaos level in my house. Do you have one of those places? Where everything gets dumped? Really important bills you put on top get piled over and lost when the American Girl catalog comes in the mail? And various hair things, bath towels, and Lowe's purchases all get clumped together in the "Deal with this SOON" category? I wish my dump spot was not in such an obvious location. I've actually tried (on several occasions) to move it to hutch in the dining room. The pile will hear nothing of being demoted out of it's prestigious position in the heart of the family and quite vigorously reappears right back next to the toaster oven.

Let's look a little closer, shall we?
Starting on the far right, is a pile of things to return to my mother. A bath towel which I borrowed (without asking) one day when I was transporting something messy from her house to mine. I can't remember what was being transported which gives some clue as to how long ago I secretly took it. Also in the pile, is a simple ice cream bucket. Were y'all aware they were making those buckets square nowadays? Anyway, if the bucket belonged to me, I would simply put it in the recycling bin. But my dear, sainted mother loves those plastic buckets, and uses and reuses and reuses them. So I want to give it back to her instead of to the recycle guy. And within the bucket is her apple peeler/corer/slicer which I borrowed (with permission) to make applesauce (3 weeks ago).

Next to that are a card (from a dear friend) and a photo (love you, CW) that Lydia nabbed off the refrigerator, and instead of simply reapplying them with magnets, I put them here. To wait. Apparently for a better time to use a magnetism. (Who DOES stuff like that?!) Then we have our Verse of the Day Cards, which are becoming more like "Verse of Every Other Month" cards. A headband that matches a dress Lydia outgrew this summer and a string of pearls I wore to church in September. If you look hard, you can barely see the edge of our fancy label machine, and extra cartridge. I love that thing! (And you can tell I use it to keep my life perfectly organized). And everybody needs a Ziploc bag of plastic spoons to top off the pile. Another sad commentary is that the usual home of the spoons is the cabinet directly above their current position. They are literally 15 inches from where they are supposed to be.

You can quit now.

I know this is rightfully the stupidest blog post someone has ever written. I'm obviously doing this as some form of weird catharsis. But, seriously, acknowledging my own cluttered-ness for all the world to see is sort of like the Jerry Springer of the blog world. Who wants to know this? Why am I putting my business up here?! So Narcissistic! It's ridiculous and on some level so very immature.


I will finish but, please, you can go on to the next blog in your roll. I can finish this one up all alone.


Here comes the sticky part.

Especially sticky because I'm sure the counter was not clean when this pile of paper was started. But while I'm working out my business here, we'll just start from the bottom.

• manuals for the Flashmaster (if you homeschool you might NEED one)
• composition notebook for Making Room for Life book club (what irony is that)
  
• Pad of paper on which I make plans for the day
• Red notebook of songs for the Women's Retreat (17 days ago)
• Bible :( I do have another one that I use daily, but this one really shouldn't be here
• Clipboard with Claire's schoolwork still attached from the day I taught while cooking
• CD cases (who knows!)
• Kids craft papers
• Map (not really, but that's what the boys call it when they roll up any piece of paper and put a rubber band around it)
  

Yuck, y'all. Why do I do this to myself? But let me get it all over and done with. It's sort of like vomit. Don't stop till you're done or you're just gonna do it again. Here goes.

That's the bag of toiletries I took to the retreat that was 17 days ago. Good thing I have extra deodorant and toothbrushes upstairs, because who knows how long it would have taken me to find these! And that little spray can with the orange top is orange hair spray I bought for the kids. None of them needed it for their Halloween costumes, I just wanted them to experience orange hair. But we haven't done it yet, much to their disdain.

Then, in the coveted On-Top-of-the-Toaster-Oven spot, we have a pile of recipes.

The one on top I made just over a week ago. My friend, Cathy in TX gave me the recipe and it is YUMMY!

All the recipes underneath it, are simply there because when I reached for the recipe out of the cabinet, I just pulled down the whole stack. I know, that's very wrong. And I shan't do it again.





Hi Mom! Hi Mother-in-Law! I'm sure you two are the only ones who actually made it all the way down here. And I would just like to say, yesterday, I cleaned off my counter. All of it. Except the orange hairspray.