The cooler temps are here. Time to lug out the crockpot and add pumpkin spice to literally everything. This slow-cooked, chunky chili is awesome to make quickly or keep in the crockpot all day.
There’s nothing that annoys me more than a giant back story before a recipe so I’ll just get to this pumpkin spice goodness.
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Do you ever just want to carve out a chunk of your backyard that’s cut off from the rest of the world? Your very own little santuary? Yeah, me too. Last year I was determined to create my own space that I could go hide and read in peace and quiet without neighbors or passerbys distracting me. My first choice was a 12 foot fence with a moat and drawbridge…
Photo Credit: Cahir Castle Portcullis Photographer: Kevin King
What, too extreme? In looking for inspiration, I spent a few hours on Pinterest, got sidetracked, but ended up with some great appetizer recipes! Then I headed on over to Hometalk. If you’ve never been to Hometalk and need decorating, landscaping, home DIY projects and tons more home and garden ideas, you have GOT to check it out.
Combining several ideas I found there, my hubby and I built privacy panels for our downstairs patio. It worked out perfectly and we love them! I posted them HERE last year, and also put the step-by-step instructions on Hometalk. We had sooo many great comments and suggestions on the post. It seems there are a lot of us out there who need a place to hide away after a long crazy-ass workday.
Jump on over to Hometalk real quick and spend a little time looking around. I created a board there, packed with some unique ideas for outdoor privacy screens. If you click on the image below, it will take you right to the board. Hometalk is basically like Pinterest, but it’s much more focused on Home and Garden. Tons of ideas and instructions, from normal ‘ol people like us, for building, fixing, creating, and repurposing.
Board on Hometalk |OrganizedCHAOSonline.com
There’s also a really cool “Ask a question” feature. There were some nasty bugs killing my plants last year. I took a picture of those bad boys, and asked if anyone could identify them. . Holy moly! Some garden experts identified the culprits and gave me some great advice on how to get rid of them that worked like a charm. Give it a try! While you’re there, follow us!
If you’ve made yourself a cozy little haven in your backyard, I’d love to know about it. Just comment below to share it, and if you’ve posted it on your blog, include the link so we can see!
Life went nutty and happened completely out of the blue. The two of us were just plugging along and then our worlds changed with very little warning. We now live closer together (yay!), we have completely different jobs (kind of yay) and we are taking the blog to a more personal place.
Right now, though, we’re working on getting all the Elf stuff up and rushin’ our buns to get new options up as well. We want to offer really really really really (really) quick ideas for parents who are up to their eyeballs in work and home and holidays and everything else that is slammed on us this time of year. Some people have more time than others and some just like to dedicate more time to the ol’ elf. Whatever works for you is great with us – we just want to have what you’re looking for. So, if there’s something that could solve all your elf problems, let us know. We’ll have printables for you to download and just throw on the little scout elf while your child is brushing their teeth before school and you realize you haven’t moved the elf from a couple of days ago. You know that feeling, right? We’ll also have more in-depth scenes that let you can build if/when you have more time on your hands.
Mom and I will sit down and fill you in on what has been happening, what’s going on with the blog and all that good stuff. We promise not to leave out the details. We have a lot of catching up to do.
The vibe of things, like I said, is more personal. We aren’t organizational experts nor is our life in order. Ever. We are organized chaos. We can pull it together when we need to but we certainly don’t believe we have to have our life in order all the time. It’s just not realistic. We’ll continue to do organizational projects, DIY and all sorts of life stuff. If we learn something, we’ll share. If we see something cool, we’ll share. If we wonder about something, we’ll ask.
What it all boiled down to is that we were trying so hard to be everything until it led us to the edge of burnout. Since we have passion for what we’re doing here and love connecting with you, we needed to figure out how to focus on the things we loved and steer away from the things we didn’t. Perfection = don’t love (it’s too hard and it brings out the nasty). You = We love. So, here is us talking to you. Real. Raw. Honest. Transparent.
On to elf stuff. We shall return with more.
If you’re new here, comment with your name. We’d love to know you’ve stopped by. Also, if you want to contact us directly, please don’t hesitate to send us an email. Click on “contact” in the menu and get to writing!
Much love to you!
Tawsha
The website has been a hot mess for over a week AND we have some cool things coming up. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster here at oCo headquarters. We would have called you, but we were moody.
If you are new to the blog or read on a regular basis, you may have noticed that the site was down for maintenance, had images missing, was back in maintenance mode and now has images missing. Again.
We thought this was going to be the one thing that could send us over the edge. Our brain space and time was completely consumed by what was going on.
A little behind the scenes: We needed to make some adjustments to the structure of our site by a certain deadline (insert tech speak about hosting, web file management and primary domain rearrangement), so we contacted our hosting company. They are, in layman’s terms, the company that makes it possible for us to have a website online. It’s like owning property on the internet and they are our broker.
What was supposed to be a very simple adjustment turned into a total cluster. Our hosting company was scrambling to figure out what on earth had gone wrong on their end as we attempted to reset things on our end. Many hours were spent with tech support and, after meeting pretty much every person they have on payroll, we believe we’ll be invited to the next potluck at their office. Fingers crossed!
The whole process has been stressful. What do we do when we’re stressed? We organize. Well, we do that when we’re stressed, bored, happy, frustrated, etc, etc, etc. You get the point. This was our sign to get the website organized. It was becoming clear that all signs pointed to “get your crap in order, ladies.”
So we did… and we’re PUMPED about it!
In the coming months, you’ll start to see a different look on the site. We’re making things MUCH simpler for you. We preach the “quick, cheap and easy” which means we need to function in exactly that way. Always evolve, right?
Why are we telling you all this?
1. Because you’re our friend and we share everything with our friends.
2. Because we don’t want you to think that we are changing who we are – it’s just the look that’s becoming more simple.
3. Because we’re adding a “services” section which has been 100% by the request of readers of this blog!
4. Because you are the reason we are here. Without you, there’s no us.
Stay tuned and, as always, your thoughts and opinions are encouraged! Either comment on a post (including this one) or contact us via email.
Who isn’t sick right now?
Good heavens, there is something going around and it’s brutal. It’s taking us all down one-by-one.
I have a friend who was fine one day and then didn’t move from her bed for three days. It’s coughing, fever, stuffy nose, cloudy head, the whole shebang.
This situation called for a care package.
I went to good ol’ Target and loaded up on all the things that are essential when you are sick:
Of course, you can go all out and add in a blanket, cough drops, ibuprofen, chapstick, a good book, a movie, fuzzy socks, magazines or anything else you love to have nearby when you’re feeling under the weather. No matter what you choose, it’s the sentiment that matters.
Stay well, friends!
Tips on supplies:
The little bin, the filler, Airborne and the hand sanitizer was found in the deal bins right when you walk inside Target. The travel section is perfect for additional items like tissues. I made a stop at Michael’s and happened upon the chalkboard stakes in the dollar bins. God bless dollar bins. It worked like a charm.
Do you have any idea what is on your computer? We’re talking programs, temp files, support files, toolbars, updates, coupon printer software, registrations, enhancements and even downloads you used once a long time ago. Yeah, us either. Let’s be honest, most of us don’t know even know what half of those are.
You’re not alone.
There are so many files on your computer (likely in the folders you pass over all the time) that are sitting on your hard drive, taking up room and even running in the background. This slows everything down and takes up room.
We’re purging all month and the computer isn’t exempt. If it’s not helping us, it’s hindering us so GET RID OF IT!
There are so many ways you can get rid of the unnecessary files that take up memory and they are easy. All you have to know is if you have a Mac or a PC. If that question even has you wrinkling your forehead, an apple = Mac. Everything else is a PC. There, that was easy.
We’ll provide multiple SIMPLE ways to clean your hard drive. All resources will be summarized at the end with a list of links (in case you missed them the first time through).
A very simple way, and something that should be done on a regular basis, is disk cleanup. It’s already on your computer and it is a simple process. But no matter how simple someone says a task is, there are always questions. We’re famous for having a question that is NEVER found on a list of FAQs. WikiHow walks you through the disk cleanup step-by-step for a PC with images included. Bless their hearts for what they’ve done. Then, there’s the hard drive cleaning and physical cleaning of your PC. Don’t be intimidated by the wording if you’re not the computer savvy type. Just follow the steps and you’ll be just fine. “Shhhh shhhh shhh shhh, there-there, it’s okaaaay”. Hey, it calms my 5-year old son; I figured it would calm you, too.
Unless you are some computer genius or you built your own, there’s no way to know every little thing about all the programs and files you have on your computer. Some support programs you use on a daily basis while others are parts of a program you may have deleted a long time ago. It’s just taking up space. We’ve run across a FREE program for PC called Should I Remove It? It tells you exactly that. This is like a treasure hunt. Or better yet, a way of reflecting on what you’ve been doing on your computer. Sometimes our downloads get tricky and install a bunch of crap on our computer that we don’t want.
Talk about simple. There’s software you can download for a very reasonable price (none over $30) and even FREE that will constantly run on your computer and organize as you go. When you’re looking for a file, you don’t have to try and remember where you saved it, you just go to the folder you know it should be in and BOOM, it’s there. Think of these programs as a super-assistant. Everything you do on your computer just magically ends up in the right place without any effort on your part (after setup).
If you have a Mac: Hazel is “Automated organization for your Mac”.
If you have a PC: Belvedere, FileJuggler and DropIt are options.
This is a whole new project, wouldn’t you agree? Patti walks you through email organization and purging HERE. It’s less of a task than you might think and it’s totally necessary.
Photos take up a ton of room on your hard drive. Especially with all the selfies we take in one day. What? Don’t tell me you don’t flip that phone camera around to snap a shot of yourself because you think you owe it to the world. Is that just me? Whoops.
If you sync your phone with your computer, your images have to go somewhere. For iPhone users, you can put those photos on iCloud. I have yet to talk with someone who has plenty of room on iCloud for their images without paying extra. I upgraded one time and refuse to do it again.
If you upload photos from your camera on to your computer, you can literally see your hard drive shrink in memory. I was using DropBox but, again, I was having to continuously upgrade to make enough room for everything. It’s expensive!
Our solution: External hard drive and/or flash drives. It may seem old school for some but we can’t justify spending $20 or more to hold photos we will need access to maybe once – in about 10 years. While it’s not the case for all our photos, it’s the case for most of them.
We’ve purchased an external hard drive which is (in simple terms), a piece of equipment you plug into your computer. Just drag the images over to the folder created by the hard drive. It’s like packing your images in a box and taking it to storage – just digitally.
Viola, you’ve freed space on your computer. You can do the same with flash drives.
Once you’ve completed your necessary steps for cleaning, you can sit back knowing that you’ve eliminated the crap on your computer and you’re ready to add more to it!
Summary of links:
Are you doing the 30-Day Plank Challenge with us? These suckers are hard, but not impossible. It never hurts to have some tricks up your sleeve to help you hold your position when you think you can’t go o-n-e s-e-c-o-n-d longer.
When you’re starting to shake but you’re still a ways from completing your goal time, try using one of these tips…
Yup. Out loud. Coach yourself on your plank position “Pull up your butt”, “Keep your back flat”. Give yourself encouragement “You can do this!”, “only 30 more seconds – you’ve GOT this!”.
This is hard work, but you’re finally taking steps toward how you want your body to look. Conjure up a visual of what you’ll look like with tight abs instead of a saggy gut. What will you wear? How good are you going to feel? How proud of yourself will you be?
Think of something that makes you happy. Spend some time remembering that vacation in Hawaii, or mentally plan the garden you’ll plant in the spring. Focus hard enough on it that you’re in that moment.
Grab the magazine you never have time to read. Start that book you loaded on your Kindle but haven’t gotten to yet.
Set your phone timer and lay it on the floor right in front of your face. Pretend you’re in a race and it’s important that you finish. Count the timer down out loud, imagine everyone cheering you on from the sidelines. Push yourself to the finish line.
Are you competitive? Enlist a friend or partner to plank with you. If you’re at all competitive, you will stick it out until your timer says 0:00. If your friend/partner starts to weaken, pump them up and encourage them to beat you. It’s a win-win.
If you’re really having trouble, be gentle and rock yourself a bit. Gently push yourself back with your arms and rock from your toes to the balls of your feet, then bring yourself back into position again. Slowly rock forward and backward (I found this eats up the time really quickly and is a great distraction).
If you’re someone who doesn’t enjoy the self talk and quiet reflection approach, turn on “Eye of the Tiger” and crank up the volume!
We can do this people! Let’s help each other out by commenting below with any tricks you have or words of encouragement.
The hardest part about purging for me, especially purging paperwork, is being afraid that I’ll get rid of something important that I’m going to need later.
With the identity theft increasing, especially the recent Target one – come ON people, really???, I’m also a little freaked out about not knowing for sure what needs to or doesn’t need to be shredded. The whole need for hyper-privacy really pisses me off to be honest, but obviously it’s a necessary evil, so we need to take steps to protect ourselves.
To make our lives a whole lot easier, I checked in with the Attorney General’s Office and found the following information. Knowing it came straight from the horses mouths (no disrespect intended), it set my mind at ease that they’re pretty accurate guidelines,
So, print these two lists out, put them somewhere you can see them, plug in your shredder, then tear through that paperwork and purge, purge, purge!
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Purge your closet. You can only avoid it for so long. Eventually it will swallow you whole and all that will be left is a pair of old bedazzled jeans and a shirt you saved in your “I’ll wear it one day” pile.
I love to be organized but the thought of purging my closet makes me want to jab my eyes out and take a nap instead. Probably not in that order. With that in mind, I was determined to find a quick way to complete this project and not regret any spur-of-the-moment decisions I made while doing it.
By the end of this post, you’ll have all the steps to purging your closet, ideas on what to do with the items you’ve purged and even a way to deal with those “I can’t make a decision today” clothes.
What You Will Need:
With a determined attitude and your bins labeled DONATE, TOSS, NOT CLOSET ITEM and CAN’T DECIDE, it’s time to face your closet. Don’t look at the big picture, just take it step by step – shoes included.
Questions To Ask Yourself:
IT’S TIME TO PURGE YOUR CLOSET
While asking yourself those questions, start going through your closet items piece by piece either keeping them in place or tossing in a bin. Take no longer than 30 seconds to make a decision. Don’t know the answer? Try it on. Still unclear? Just choose a bin because we’ll address what’s in each bin after you sort your closet. This whole project could take you a short lifetime if you dilly dally. Move quickly.
Once you have made it through your entire closet, you should have far less clothing available in your wardrobe and full bins. This is a good thing.
How To Sort Clothing In Your Closet:
Hanging your clothes is the most simple way to keep everything in order. If you don’t have enough room, consider folding (or rolling) tees, tanks and workout clothing. Stack them (beware of their tendency to topple over) on a shelf or in a drawer. You don’t have to get all Martha Stewart, just do it in a way you can continue to do later on. Today may be purge day but when you are rushing through chores and you need to put something in your closet, you won’t have time for perfection. Folding tips can be found here: How To Fold Laundry Quickly.
How To Arrange Clothing In Your Closet:
This is a custom experience. How does your brain work? Would you rather have outfits grouped together? Would you rather have ‘like items’ grouped together? Would you prefer all of your clothing grouped by color? Make a decision and go with it. My closet is arranged by t-shirts, sweatshirts, dress shirts, jackets, jeans, yoga pants, pajama pants, formal pants, short dresses and long dresses.
Your bins need to be dealt with. This can be a quick process. Here are some suggestions and things to keep in mind:
Donate:
Toss:
Not A Closet Item:
Can’t Decide:
Now that you’ve completed all the steps, take a look in your closet. Nice work! Give yourself a pat on the back, grab a drink or tell everyone else it will last all day and spend the rest of the time doing whatever you want.
Any questions?
photo credit: Easy Giving
I went to a Catholic school through the 8th grade. Nuns enforced rules and punishment. It was a life of rituals, uniforms, memorizing prayers and strict education. I learned piano. I made lifelong friends. I won a National penmanship award. I kissed a boy for the first time. We hid on the back of the church steps and played poker during recess. It was a life that isn’t seen today. I went on to public school and became social. I met new friends, fell in love (several times), played sports, was a cheerleader, went to prom. I loved those years. My mementos let me relive those years of being young, having a strong athletic body, not being able to imagine myself at the age I am now, and dreamed of a future that resulted in a totally different reality.
My mom was my best friend. When i married and had kids, she was who I called first to share good or bad news, get advice, or just to gossip. We sewed together once a week in our BPFC (Be Prepared For Christmas) club. We shopped. We shared recipes. Mom died on my 28th birthday, when my kids were 2 and 3. I was devastated and it took me years to feel halfway normal again. Holding on to some of mom’s stuff, in an odd way, is holding on to a piece of mom.
I married at 21. We had a good couple years of marriage that produced two great kids. His job took him in and out of town. We grew apart. The marriage ended 9 years later. That was years ago, we remain friends, and each of us are happily remarried, but the things I’ve kept from those years are tied to a marriage and time when my kids were part of a two-parent family. So I feel I need to save those things to pass on to them.
I was a single mom for most of my kids school years. It was us against the world, creating memories, tackling life head-on, and living our lives to the fullest as best we could. Although those years were a struggle financially, they were some of the best years of my life. I’m proud of the adults my children have become, and I’m proud of myself for powering through some really difficult years that resulted in the relationship I now have with my kids. The “things” I’ve saved from those years are precious to me.
So… how do you get rid of sentimental things? First of all, who says we have to? I’m an extremely sentimental person and have trouble letting go…of anything. When I love someone (or something), I love it hard! I cry easily. My kids “I love you, mom” produces a lump in my throat. Seeing the 12th man set Guinness noise level records when watching a Seahawks (GO HAWKS!) game makes me cry. Holding a baby, ANY baby, brings tears to my eyes. I’m a sentimental hot mess. So I’m sorry to all the minimalists who advise getting rid of sentimental clutter because they’re just “things”, but there are just some things I will NOT and CANNOT let go. I say, if you’ve got the room for it, and it means something to you, keep it.
I do agree, though, that saving everything that holds a memory can get out of hand. So here are some ideas for choosing what things to keep, uses for the things you save, and minimizing the space needed to store those things you can’t let go of…
Elementary school artwork and projects, report cards, detention slips, essays, etc. Letters, cards, and notes.
Your wedding dress, the bunting your baby wore home from the hospital, the t-shirt you bought in Mexico, your grandma’s pillbox hat, your cheerleading sweater, your dad’s favorite belt buckle, your favorite jeans from four sizes ago.
Your grandma’s china, your dad’s favorite belt buckle, the framed picture of your great-aunt, your mother-in-law’s wedding ring, your mom’s old cookie press.
Don’t let anyone guilt you into getting rid of things that are important to you. Give yourself as much time as you need to let go. I feel that allowing yourself moments to relive and revisit memories can be healing. It can ground yourself by giving you a chance to revisit your past and pat yourself on the back for the progress you’ve made. It can remind you of plans you had for your future, and inspire and re-motivate you to attain those dreams.
I say that if you’re thoughtful about which items to keep, take steps to preserve them properly, and organize and label any containers where they live, if you have the room to store them, then do it. Who are you hurting? I don’t think it means you’re living in the past. It’s true that these things are just “things”, but things, just like smells, taste and touch, can morph you back to a memory or a time that is close to your heart. My mom touched that sewing pattern, studied it over a cup of coffee, made notes on it, and was excited to start sewing it once we were all tucked away in bed. My kids held the crayon that colored that picture of the three of us, carried it home from school and proudly handed it to me with their little 1st grade hands. I’ll be damned if I’ll let those things go.
Am I wrong?