Home Sanctuary

Turn in June Points!

Can you believe that July is upon us? This summer is zooming past. Today, I'm asking for point totals from last month - so you can have a chance to win this:

This canvas print is 24" x 24" and it's one of my favorite verses.  This will go with practically any decor and will be a reminder of the HUGE God we serve. It's even more gorgeous in real life than this picture....I love it.

So, did you keep track of your scores from the daily Small Things? You might not think that you did very many, but when you sit down to tally them up, I'll bet you'll be surprised by how much you accomplished! Now, if you didn't feel like adding up numbers but you had fun following along anyway, you can enter your name into a Random Drawing for this:

Today's Small Thing takes two steps:

1) Email your point total to me. My email link is in the right column of this page. Just put the number in your email and say hi! If you simply want to be entered into the Random Drawing, then skip the numbers and say "enter me!" Easy.

2) Leave a comment, telling us which Small Thing was your favorite last month.  I love reading how one thing makes such a difference to one person, while something else works for another. It's a great way to share your experience, and encourage new readers to jump in and try it for themselves.

If you have already won a Most Points prize in the past, please let someone else have a chance to win by only entering in the Random Drawing contest.

POINTS: 30, Good toward JUNE's total

Thank you so much for being part of what makes me get up in the morning! My home is becoming the place I've always longed for it to be...one Small Thing at a time - and you are a huge part of why that is happening.  Meeting here each day gives me the motivation and friendship that makes a difference. Thanks for being my Company Girls!

Feels Like....

Yesterday, we worked on making our homes sound a little more sanctuary-like. I was definitely more aware of noise than usual, how about you? Since we are on the subject of our senses, let's just take it a step further and discuss "touch."

What does your home feel like?

Do you have soft towels and fresh sheets? Those are the first things that make me say, "ahhh!" I think of warm blankets, cool air conditioners, comfy socks, favorite T shirts, plump pillows and my heavenly bed. Wait, lots of those things involve napping and sleeping, don't they?? Oops.

Sun streaming through windows, books with fine pages, cuddly stuffed animals, the afghan placed over a chair. A throw rug by the kitchen sink to cushion my feet. Bubbles in a bath to soothe my skin. Soft cats and furry dogs....

There are so many things that fill our daily lives with pleasure, but it's easy to overlook them - especially when we get busy.

Today's Small Thing is to celebrate the sense of touch: the things that make your home feel good. Ask your children what their favorite thing to feel is and experience it with them. Put extra softener in with your towels or line-dry some sheets if you can. Plump some pillows, fluff the blankets, take a bubble bath...you could even explore the sense of touch with your husband. Huh? Notice the things that feel nice and see if there are ways that you can improve how they feel. Simply be aware of how this sense affects your sanctuary today.

POINTS: 40 for making your home FEEL good in some way

What feels wonderful to you?

Sounds Like......

I often think about how creating a Home Sanctuary is all about the senses.  Having a place of refuge in this busy world means that when you walk through the door, you feel "Home."

This is my place.

This is my sanctuary.

This is my refuge.

You can close the door on the world of high gas prices and international turmoil, office politics and play group drama.  You can circle the wagons, so to speak, and live in your own little shelter from the storms.  

And I know that we all struggle with the clutter of life...the toys, the laundry, the junk mail...and we spend a lot of time on doing things to make our homes LOOK nice.  That's important stuff, because how your home looks affects your sanctuary in a big way.

But for today I'd like to focus on another important sense, and that is hearing.

What does your home sound like today?

Stop and pay attention to what is bombarding your sense of hearing and you might be surprised.  TV's, radios, phones, traffic....we are constantly hearing things that we've learned to "tune out," yet affect our sense of peace.

Today's Small Thing is really simple.  It starts with just listening.  Listen to your children play and even bicker (well, yours probably don't bicker, but mine did).  Listen to doors and cabinets being slammed, footsteps and the volume of media.  Listen to birds chirping, dogs barking, horns blaring.

The second thing is to ask yourself:  are there some things I can control to make my home sound more peaceful?  Could I put felt stoppers on doors and drawers to eliminate the slamming?  (I LOVE FELT STOPPERS!)  Could I turn off the TV and radio?  Could my children please use their inside voices?  How about the level of my own voice?  Could I play some beautiful or upbeat music?  Sometimes just being aware of sounds is enough to make me take a little bit of action to do things better.  I want my home to appeal to my ears so that it SOUNDS like home to me.

POINTS:  30 for listening to the sounds of your home (Oh, Rachel Anne, could it get any easier than that?)

BONUS: 30 for taking ONE action to make it sound like a sanctuary

What are you doing today to improve the sound of your home?

Ketchup

After a weekend of painting trim on our house, and doing chores around here, I've fallen behind on the "regular" tasks of life. Laundry, picking up, cleaning...all fell by the wayside so I could focus on the bigger jobs. I woke to a pile of clean, but unfolded clothes on the floor of my bedroom - tossed there from my bed so I could crawl in last night.

That often happens on weekends that are simply too full to get everything done.  Sometimes, Mondays are just good days to catch up. You could call this a "Ketchup Monday," get it??

Do you need to get caught up on a "regular" task? Simply use today's Small Thing as an opportunity to dive in and get back on track. Folding clothes, vacuuming, writing emails, paying bills, cleaning......you'll find that an extra 15 minutes of effort will yield great results!

POINTS: 40 for playing "Ketchup" today

PS Have you ever thought about fasting, but are afraid to try?  I'm talking about it over here.....and there is a group of us who are going to take a baby step tomorrow morning by fasting breakfast.  Want to join us?

Oh, How They Pile Up!

With a nod to our Company Girls in the Southern Hemisphere, who are heading into winter, our subject today revolves around the never-ending piles of dishes in the summer months.  If you have children out of school, or at least off their regular schedules, it seems like every. time. you. turn. around. there are dishes in the sink. They multiply like rabbits! I almost hate walking into the kitchen, because I know I'll see plates and glasses in the sink.

Keeping up with dishes is such a discouraging task that I feel it is my duty to lift company morale by offering points that can accrue to a significant amount over the weekend. You may delegate, you may eat out, or you may choose to be a martyr, but any way you can get this done will count.

Today's Small Things is to have dishes done, dried and put away before you go to bed each night this weekend. You'll get points for each night you accomplish this, so this is NOT all or nothing, yay!

Friday: 50 points

Saturday: 50 points

Sunday: 50 points.

Total Take: 150 POINTS

Are you up for this??? Yeah, Baby! Hand me the Ivory, I'm getting started.....

Don't forget to scroll down for Company Girl Coffee.

Bread Winner

Excuse me, but why don't people close bread and bun sacks and then carefully twist the twist-ties around the plastic to make them air tight? Do they LIKE dry bread?

Another question: Why don't people eat the last slices of one loaf of bread before diving into a fresh one? It's obvious that their need for said freshness is in complete contradiction to their utter disregard for sealing up the previous packages. Don't they realize that if they took better care of the opened sacks, they could eat fresh bread all the time?

These pressing questions haunt me, along with questions about toilet paper rolls and why they never get replaced by anyone but me. The T.P. questions can wait, while we spend some time kneading the bread issues.

Today's Small Thing is about all things "Bread." Do you have sacks with lone slices of crusty bread in your pantry? How about bags of moldy ends of French bread that you meant to finish off with leftovers but never did? Do you have an unsightly pile of empty bread/bun sacks that you plan to re-use, that are stuffed into a drawer and pop out like a jack in the box when you open it? How about a jumble of twist-ties that serve no purpose?

Simply clean up your bread zone, organize the sacks, throw out old bread or defrost a loaf from your freezer. Heck, you could even make bread! Earn your easy points by doing something with bread - preferably not just eating it, but if that's all you can come up with, I'm actually OK with that. Hey, that's the way the Kaiser rolls.

POINTS: 40 for being a bread winner today

What will your "bread task" be?

Bottom Line

My daughter, Meghan, and I attended a wedding on Saturday.  I made a last minute stop at Marshalls for a gift and, of course, something to wear because I have nothing. I dashed home, hastily got ready, and then realized that the drapey black culotte thing I bought would show my panty lines. I rummaged through my drawers and baskets for my off-brand Spanx but could not come up with them anywhere.

Not to worry. In the deep recesses of my memory, a fashion tip I'd once heard surfaced: If you're in a pinch for a bottom-smoother, simply cut off the legs of a pair of pantyhose and slide the top part on.

Eureka!

I grabbed some scissors and sliced the legs away from an old pair and put it on. Fabulous idea, I was set. And so proud of my innovation.

Perhaps I should have titled this post, "Things That Seemed Like Great Ideas at the Time But Did Not Live Up to Expectations."

The modified pantyhose is indeed great in theory....and for about the first hour. After some time elapses, that's where the problems set in.

I made it all the way through the ceremony and into the reception before I realized that my science wasn't as solid as I'd assumed. As I stood up to get more cheese from the appetizer table, the cut-off edges of my faux Spanx rolled up to my derriere like Cuban cigars and created a disaster all up in there. Waaay too much cheese, ladies.

Mortified, I stiffly made my way to the ladies room for an adjustment, and decided to stand for the rest of the reception. There would be no dancing today.

This entire scenario could have been avoided if I'd simply had an organized underwear drawer. Which is why Today's Small Thing is to straighten it up. This little task could save you from a similar fate....and the bottom line is: you don't want to go there.

POINTS: 40 for organizing your personal items: panties, slips, bras, socks, and hopefully, some Spanx.

Curtain Call

I love the feeling I get when I finally do something that's been bugging me for a real long time but put off doing because it seems hard.  I feel a little sheepish when I realize, "hey! that wasn't so bad after all!!"

On Saturday, I was taking a shower and looking at my disgusting curtain liner - again. Didn't that thing used to be white? Now it was pretty dingy and mildewed at the bottom - such a difficult, cumbersome and taxing job to clean - or so I thought. And then, for some reason, I actually dealt with it, rather than simply letting it depress me. I got out of the shower, took it down and tossed it in the wash machine with some detergent and bleach.

WOW! That shower curtain was white as snow in 30 minutes - with no real effort on my part! I popped it back into place and have completely enjoyed the feeling of satisfaction I've gotten from it ever since. I've actually walked into the bathroom several times for no other reason than to admire my handiwork.

Now, not everyone has shower curtains. Some people have shower doors - and obviously you can't pop them into the wash machine. I remember how bad my shower door used to get at my old house, full of water spots and soap scum.  The little grooves around the door could get pretty nasty.

Today's Small Thing is to clean up your shower curtain or shower door.  Although this seems like a super hard job, if you get right on it, it will only take a few minutes. That's because you don't have to clean one single other thing around it.  See, usually, by the time I finish cleaning the whole bathroom, I'm too exhausted to deal with the shower curtain. By doing the curtain (or door) ONLY, we will be sure to get it done!

POINTS: 60 for making your shower curtain or door sparkle! What a great Monday task! You'll be admiring your handiwork for days!

Do you have any tips for making this job easier??

Ready, Set, Go!

My kids still laugh about how gullible they were to fall for my games. Boy, they were easy to trick! I used to get them to do chores by pretending it was a race, and would use a stop watch to "time" their speed.  It was hilarious to see how they could go from slumped and dragging, to Energizer Bunny speed with the three little words, "Ready, Set, Go!"

You know me well enough by now to know that I still use these old tricks on myself to get my own slumped and dragging body moving.  The other day, I shuffled into my closet and was depressed at the sight of the pile of clothes I'd left on the floor.  I almost turned and walked out, but then thought, "I'll just give myself 5 minutes and then leave whatever's not done for another time." IN LESS THAN ONE MINUTE, the pile was gone. Huh! I tricked myself into it.

Today's Small Thing is to see how quickly you can do one dreaded chore. This could be the doing the greasy dishes from last night, or folding the laundry, or scooping the kitty litter. Whatever it is that makes you feel "slumped and dragging," simply make a race out of it and set a world record! Literally check your watch, say, "Ready, Set, Go!" and then speed to the finish line.

Got some kids who are laying around? Trick them into getting something useful done by making it a competition! They are so fun to fool...they'll never realize what you've done until years later. Trust me.

POINTS: 40 for racing to the finish line.

Interview with Libby Langdon and David Gregg

 

Last week, I was invited to interview Libby Langdon, from HGTV's Small Space Big Style, and David Gregg, from BehindTheBuy.com.  They are both contributing to cablemover.com, a website that is dedicated to helping people as they relocate to new homes or cities.  These days, there is so much more to moving than filling out change of address forms, and it helps to have a source that can get things like cable TV, internet, and cell phone services organized for you.

I jumped at the chance to talk to real design and technology experts, but am still kicking myself that I didn't ask Libby the most pressing question on my mind, which is:

With all the white I'm seeing in decorating, I'd like to know how to incorporate it into my home without making it look like a set for a "feminine products" commercial. My husband is very uncomfortable with that. What are your thoughts?

I guess that question will have to wait until next time, but I LOVED her suggestions for how to make all the technology we live with look less "junky." She's got some great examples here.  She also mentioned her Top Ten Color Choices, which makes me absolutely giddy. I was excited to find I've actually used several of these colors in past projects. I feel so very affirmed....or perhaps...I.... am affirming Libby. hmmm.

;

Today's Small Thing is to spend some time on your current "spruce up" project, if you have one. Gaze at the color chips you've collected from the paint store, hang up a new photograph, spray paint a chair, tie some ribbon on something, or drool over a Pottery Barn catalog. Sometimes it's hard to justify doing something that just makes things look nice, so today have fun earning your points doing just that.  Remember, beauty is one of the "legs" of sanctuary....you need this! POINTS: 50 for sprucing up, planning your spruce up, or simply dreaming about sprucing up

What is YOUR spruce-up project?? Mine is to hang valances in my office. I'm using cloth napkins I fell in love with as my inspirations...