You know how it is. You find a notepad. Select a working pen. Gather your thoughts. Put pen to paper. Take a breath. Get totally overwhelmed. Take another deeper breath. Decide what needs to go first. Make the first notation on your to do list. Make a second entry. Third entry. Fourth. Fifth. Tenth entry. Eleventh. Seventeenth. Twentieth entry. Start hyperventilating for realz.

If you are like me, just writing the to do list is overwhelming and satisfying at the same time. By penning the lengthy to dos, you get a sense of the enormity of the work ahead of you. You can be upset by the sheer magnitude of the list and invigorated by having a written record of what you need to do.

A week and a half ago I penned my to do list AKA “the novel.” I sat on the list for a moment or two or three or maybe even four before attacking the list full force. With only a few weeks to go til Christmas, I was leaving nothing to chance.

Item #1: Buy gifts for local family…delegated to my husband since each day he drives past the store I planned to shop at. Item #1 = Done.

Item #2 through #8: Work tasks that only I could attend to. Items #2-#8 = some done, some partially done, some to be done. Same old, same old. But, I have it under control.

Item #9: Blog header. Hmmm. A graphic designer I am not. A good, very good blogging friend created a header for me and transferred my blog from Blogger to WP. This friend? She’s a keeper. I splurged on a new domain name a few weeks ago. I probably need a new blog header like a hole in the head, but what can I say? I caught the “I need a new blog to express all the thoughts that are floating in my head” bug.

So, Item #9 had me wondering. Who would I hire to do the blog header? I don’t know many graphic designers. Recently I reviewed Zaarly. Zaarly is a cool, new site where you can post what you need. Post your to do list one item at a time. You can also post items you have for sale. I gave Zaarly a whirl.

My first Zaarly item was a call for someone to haul away a broken bedframe, old paint cans a plenty, and a coule of old monitors. No takers at $25. Raised the price on Zaarly to $50. Still not takers.  The problem could be that I live off the beaten path…probably too far away for someone who hauls stuff for a living.

My next idea was to post about the blog header. I guessed correctly that I would get a number of hits from graphic designer-types willing to help me. Over the course of a few days, the hits have come thick and fast. Started conversations with 3 of the graphic designers. Got a sense that one of the designers was a little too green about the gills. I have minimal graphic experience. I need a serious amount of hand holding. 

After talking back and forth with three of the designers, I drafted a detailed list of what I am looking for with my blog header. I’m ready to see what the designer creates for me. Thanks to Zaarly I was able to find someone who could do a to-do item for me. And with the schedule that I have going right now both at work and at home, any help I can find is golden.

Signing up for Zaarly is easy.

• Use my link to sign up.
• For everyone who signs up for a Zaarly account, Zaarly will donate $1 to Feeding America.
• Follow @Zaarly on Twitter.
• Like Zaarly on Facebook.

I was compensated with a gift card for using Zaarly to get tasks done. The opinions expressed in the post are my own. I follow the tenets of Blog With Integrity.

I’m the worst person to buy for. I buy few clothes for myself as my tastes and specifications are very limited. I can search racks and racks at a clothing store and find only one or maybe two items that I can tolerate. I don’t play video games. I don’t listen to music on my iTouch. I read, but again I can be picky about what I want to read. I love watching movies, but often purchase any movies I want. In short, I’m hard to buy for.

I recently heard about a site that is not a site where you can buy gifts, but it is a site where you can post a job that needs to be done, or an item that needs to be found. As a hard-to-buy for person, what I would really like is for someone to do something on the household “Honey Do” list. Now that would a gift come true!

You know the list of tasks around your house that are not urgent, but need to be done? The timeframe for these tasks is not specified. In my home, it is “needs to be done sometime after all the important and crisis tasks” are done. So the tasks remain not done…forever.

I have had 2 computers with monitors stored in my garage since 2010. Maybe earlier. Neither computer works. Both hard drives have been scrubbed. But, there the computers sit. Why? well, one of these days I will have a free moment to load up the computers and take both to the local dump. While I am at it, I’ll take the broken bedframe, old cans of paint, etc. My local trash service will not pick up computers, paint, or other toxic items.

So, in the name of “let’s get something crossed off my to do task list” I want to tell you about Zaarly.com. Zaarly is a site where you can post about a task you need to get done. You post what the task is — I posted asking for someone to haul my computers, bedframe, and paint to the dump. All I need to do is wait until someone is willing to do my task. A few weeks ago I posted about wanting to find a price on a camera…within hours I received an answer to my question. Stop back to hear more.

While you get ready for the holidays, think about those tasks around the house that you need to do, but would rather have someone else do them. Post to Zaarly and sit back and wait for someone else to do the job on your to do list!

Use Zaarly to find DJs, moving help, personal trainers, pet services, and so much more.

• Sign up for Zaarly using my link.
• With every signup, Zaarly will with every sign up donate $1 to Feeding America.
• Like Zaarly on Facebook.
• Follow @Zaarly on Twitter.
• Use the Zaarly app on Facebook.

I was compensated for writing this post by Zaarly and Blogger Connection. The views expressed in this post are my own. I follow the tenets of Blog With Integrity.

Short, sweet post today with links…DSW…Kohl’s…HomeDepot.com…and OldNavy.com

• Free Next Day Shipping on any order for DSW Premier Rewards Members. See site for details
• 10% off everything at Kohl’s! Coupon code: SMS2828 Expires 10/22/11
• Save up to $600 Instantly at HomeDepot.com with Buy More, Save More on Special Order Windows and Patio Doors.
• 25% off at OldNavy.com! Coupon code: ONAUTUMN Hurry! Expires 10/22/11

All the links in this post are to my RetailMeNot affiliate links.

Choices. We all have to make choices. This morning I dithered and dallied and dragged my heels on making a choice. I won’t even get in to what the choice was. It was relatively minor. I should have debated a few minutes, made a decision, and moved on with my day. Instead, I dallied and dithered…

Some decisions are harder to make not because you are worried about making the wrong decision. The problem is more that you have too many options to choose from. Like what stain to remove.

Yes, I said stain. Five people. 17 years in this home — we’re the first owners. Wear and tear of everything in this house. In this home there are stains aplenty. So, when I was asked to review a type of stain removing cleaning pad from a well known manufacturer of vacuums and carpet cleaners, I knew I could find a stain. The problem…which stain to choose?!

After much consideration and running from room to room to see which carpet looked the worst. Fun task, not. I chose the very much trafficked area from the backdoor through the family room to the kitchen. We don’t wear shoes in the house, but you would never know it from the state of the carpet. Let’s just say I won’t be posting pics.

The  family room carpet is in need of a cleaning, but I have been putting it off as I hope to get hardwood floors in the near future. In the meantime, I opened the individually wrapped Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad. The pad is soft and moist on one side with a plastic backing to the other side. The instructions are easy…

• Vacuum the carpet to remove any excess dirt and debris.
• Place the Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad on the area to be cleaned.
• Press down on the pad with your shoe. If you wore just a sock, your foot would get a little wet.
• I found that I could move back and forth over the pad without moving the pad around.
  
• Leave the Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad on the stained area for 30 minutes.
• Vacuum the area after removing the pad.
  

The area I chose looks much better — not spotless, but less grime-y. The Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad took off the top layer of grime leaving just a few ingrained spots of dirt probably from wear and tear of 17 years of people walking back and forth to the back door. I might hit these stains with the pad again to see if I can lift more dirt and grime. Again I’m too embarrassed to post the before stain and the after shot of the soiled Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad. Trust me when I say that the pad was put through its paces.

The Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pads:

• Stomp out tough stains.
• Remove tough set-in stains like red wine, food stains, fruit juice, pet messes, mud/dirt, and more.
• Leaves carpet smelling fresh.
• Each box contains 5 individually wrapped, pre-moistened pads.
• Each box of 5 pads costs $4.99 from the Bissell site, but I am not sure how much the box of pads retail for in stores.

I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of BISSELL and received product samples and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

I’m not what you would call a super-duper housewife. I clean when I have to do. I declutter when the mood strikes. The problem is that I never know when a cleaning mood will strike.

This weekend was one of those times. I saw an opportunity to not only declutter but do it with other people. The other people were my kids and husband. The husband was easy to get on board. He has wanted to declutter the playroom for a while. The kids were a harder sell but we left them no choice. Head down to the basement…or else.”Or else” is a good motivator…it turns out!

Once down in the playroom in the basement we set to work. Now in our family, I am the crazy, anal retentive type who must reunite toys with all pieces, doodads, widgets, people, and anything else you might want to imagine before sending the toy to the Good Will or consignment pile. My oldest was all for chucking everything in to boxes or a trash bag. But, I instructed the kids to declutter the Musings from Me way…

Here’s how we decluttered part of the playroom:

• I assigned each kid the task of sorting through one toy.
• I assigned each task to each kid so that there would be no arguments.
• So the breakdown of tasks by kid/age group was as follows…

- The Teen found all the track and pieces to the Geo Trax set.

- The Tween searched high and low for all the Star Wars guys (are there any Star Wars gals except Princess Leia and Padme?!).

- The Kid found all the large trucks and front end loaders and helicopters.

- The Husband found all the dressup clothes.

- And me? I found all the Hot Wheels racetrack pieces. Oh and I sorted through the cars bin to sift through Stars Wars figures, Silly Bandz, fake jewelry, and anything else that was mixed in with the cars.

• I had each person put the items that they had found in a Rubbermaid or plastic tub labeled with the name of the toy “Army Men” or “Geo Trax.”

With the Geo Trax track, buildings, and railway and road vehicles nicely stacked in a box, I released the Teen. She was grateful to escape the basement to clean her room. Now that’s some decluttering dedication. In the face of having to clean no matter what she chose her bedroom!

The Tween, the Kid, the Husband, and I delved further in to the basement.

• I searched and sifted and dredged through the laundry room for any toys that I had stashed for possible consigning. The Kid and I decided which toys he wanted to get rid of.
• The Tween found all the army men and cleaned up the High School Musical House and assorted Troys, Barbies, and Sharpays.
• The Husband and I measured the room for the addition of our family room furniture.

The process for moving furniture to the playroom has been a long time in coming. We’re finally ready to get new furniture for the family room. The kids will gain a more comfortable seating area for watching movies and playing games. Our current chairs consist of the old glider from the days of babies…a fuzzy purple chair…a low-to-the ground deck chair from Justice…2 low on beans bean bag chairs…and a teeny chair that was designed for a very small child. So new seating is a welcome addition to the playroom.

In order to get the new seating in to the room, decluttering is a must. I titled this post…Back-to-School Edition as I want to get the kids in to the mindset of keeping tidy rooms in whatever room they are in. I think the final straw was finding an oven glove on  the coffee table in the family room. Why? No one seemed to know why it was there or admit to moving it. Sigh.

What are you doing to get ready for the new school year?

Wells. Septic. Underground pipes. No waste disposal. Clogged toilet. These words/phrases sum up my plumbing woes.

As we tromped around the property before we had even built our home, we discussed having a well and a septic field. My husband grew up with a well and a septic field. He mentioned something about toilets and flushing. I was only half listening. The fact that stuck with me was only that we couldn’t have a waste disposal. Oh how I wish I had been a good listener!

As a married couple, we were drowning — ha! — in bedrooms, space, and bathrooms. The two of us had three bathrooms to choose from. There was never a wait for the bathroom. Come to think of it we never had a toilet overflow. A drain clog. We lived in a sugar-coated world of flushing toilets, drains that drained, and toilets that never ever ever clogged. Ahh, the memories.

With the birth of our first child, there were no changes. Diapers were extracted from the accursed Diaper Genie plastic sausages and promptly tossed in the trash. Potty training didn’t change anything. No clogged toilets even after the toddler was over her fear of the toilet. Add in Child #2…even when Child # was potty trained…still no problems.

Fast forward 10 years…with two parents and three kids and various guests…we are in a nightmarish world of plumbing issues. And by issues I mean SERIOUS issues. Over the last 5 years, we have:

• had a huge series of leaks from our basement plumbing unit thingie. Every single box, bowl, or bucket in our basement was full to the brim with water during our now-infamous first plumbing leak. We had no idea that our plumbing woes would only get worse.
• paid a boatload of money to repair said plumbing unit thingie and associated pipes and valves.
• bought a water softener system and a filtration system that was intended to solve our acid-in-the-water and acid-eat-through-pipes issues.
• had two burly men pull our well piping out of the well cap to fix a teeny tiny pinprick leak that was causing untold damage…underground and in the house.
• bought a plunger for each bathroom and not the decorative kind either. Nope we have the industrial strength version in each bathroom. Unsightly, but oh so useful.
• have scrubbed the green stain off the bath…numerous times. Over the years the green, became pale blue, and now the blue is now a sickly gray. Have not found a cleaner to fully remove the stains.

After installing a water treatment system, we have had no more problems with acidic water “eating” through our copper pipes. But, we still can’t effectively flush the toilet. 8 times out of 10 I need a plunger in hand as I flush.It’s a royal pain.

Oh, and a not-so-good and very much ongoing issue is that when we lose power, we lose our well. Without power we can’t run our well pump, without a well pump there is no way for water to come out of the taps in the bathrooms, or the toilet. If I get advance warning of a storm coming, I will run a bathtub of water. At least with a tub of water, we can scoop water out of the bath to flush a toilet. With hand sanitizer at the ready and a tub full of water, we can last in our home without power for about 24 hours before having to stay with relatives.

Our kids are now of an age where I don’t have to remind them not to flush or run the fawcets when we lose power. Thank goodness. What is your plumbing issue or should I say nightmare? Share below, so we can commiserate with each other!

In response to @1momof5‘s post over at Mom It Forward, I left this comment, which I added to.

I have a large basement storage room…too big, really. I reorganized the storage room by moving items I never use but can’t bare to part with or want to keep for grandkids/my children to the back of the storage room. I now have a large area in the storage room to store overflow items from every room in the house.

I recently moved a couple of vacuum cleaners, paint cans, old clothes, toys no longer played with, and a host of other items to the now-clear-of-stuff area in the storage room. Lest you think I am a complete and utter packrat I do have 8 garbage bags of stuff and a couple of ancient computers in the garage ready for AmVets/Purple Heart. Baby steps!

I have a project brewing where I plan to move the family room furniture to the kids’ playroom. We will get a sectional for the family room. No decision has been made yet, but I am mulling over the different furniture options. The present family room furniture has not worn well over the last 7 years. The playroom has no furniture except beanbag chairs and folding chairs not designed for adults.

I want to make the playroom more tween and teen friendly. I plan to move all the toys including a doll house, stable, and the ESPN Zone basketball net to the end of the playroom that you don’t see when you walk in to the room. When my girls have friends over the kids have to find space among the toys to sit down.

I have removed a large number of toys from the playroom, which are now stored in the storage room. The storage room is very large — almost half the size of the basement with the playroom taking up almost all of the rest of the basement. My office and the laundry room make up the rest of the basement floorplan. When we finished the basement we made the storage room larger as it was cheaper than making the living area of the basement larger. We had my FIL do the work on the basement, while we purchased most of the drywall, ceiling, and paint.

Even finishing the basement ourselves was pricey. Why are home projects so expensive? I wish that we had had the money back in 1999/2000 to make the playroom larger/laundry room and office bigger, too.

What is your household renovation plan?

The photo above shows the rare moment of complete laundry nirvana. This moment occurs on extremely rare occasions. Almost never. Struggling to think of any other time it has happened. Thinking. Thinking…

Do you know I don’t think I have ever had a clean laundry room? If you don’t count the day we moved in to the house that is. Yes, on that day the laundry room was blissfully free of clothes. It didn’t last long.

I won’t show what the laundry room looks like right now. It isn’t as pretty as this photo I can tell you.

I’m done. I’m over stinkbugs. I could deal with the little critters if it was a once-every-seven-years-cicada sighting. But, no. It would appear that stinkbugs are here to stay.

Sightings of stinkbugs in the following places…

• crawling towards the fridge
• under the microwave
• on the inside and outside of the screen door…my tween screamed when I tried to open the door to let some fresh air in
• on the car windows — inside the car
• underneath a stack of magazines

and finally the grossest and most eeewwww-ish stinkbug sighting…

• I found a stinkbug resting in my bra — is this not gross??

In our house the kitchen is the hub of all family activities. It is not huge. It certainly has architectural issues. For instance I cannot open the fridge door all the way. But, it is our meeting spot for homework. Gathering place for dinner. An repository of broken items. If Coach Dad has superglue…Coach Dad can fix anything.

In the near future, we will remodel our kitchen. Our grand plan is to create a kitchen/dining room/eating area. We’re ditching the formal dining room as we only eat in the dining room once or twice a year. Our appliances are all new, but the cabinets are particle board…and not good quality particle board at that.

Given the chance to remodel, KraftMaid offers a line of cabinets that can bring a special warmth and personality into your kitchen – or the room that helps you relax most. KraftMaid recently launched an online inspiration board tool to help homeowners bring their dream kitchen to life and uncover their personal style. The online tool lets users express their personal style through moods, colors, and textures. KraftMaid also recently launched a new collection of cabinets, cabinet doors, hardware, and bathroom fixtures.

KraftMaid is giving away a $50,000 kitchen remodel in the “Define Your Style” contest this fall. For every time you create and share your style using the KraftMaid inspiration board tool, you receive one entry for a chance to win $50,000.

Now to start creating our family’s kitchen style on KraftMaid.

I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of KraftMaid. Mom Central Consulting sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.