A Couple Things That Make Me Happy

Of course, there are lots of things in life that make me happy, but these are just a couple that have been a part of life lately.

Over the past month or so, I have been given green beans from a friend's garden. They have such a surplus that they bring me large sacks full to church. It is such a blessing to me! There have been so many that we couldn't keep up with eating them all even if we tried! I have been blanching and freezing them. The children help me wash and snap the ends, then we snap them into one inch pieces (more or less). Its been fun to work on it together and has made them anxious to have a garden of our own so that we can put up lots of food for the fall and winter. At last count we had put up 20 quarts of beans!! Those will certainly come in handy as I feed my hungry mob! For many reasons, I haven't been able to have my own garden for the last couple of years. Often it just kills me to pay the high prices in the grocery store.! Just the other day it was $4.69 for a 10lb. bag of Potatoes! Potatoes of all things!! I can make sense of high prices on meat and cheese or specialty items...but POTATOES??!! That just doesn't seem right! Potatoes are supposed to be cheap! Poor man's food! Cheap starch that delicious with lots of butter, milk, salt and pepper!! I know, it's really only 47cents a pound and most things are more than that, but I just can't rationalize that one. I guess everyone has to obsess about something that doesn't matter, and that's mine.

As you can imagine, with five children, sometimes I run short on time to do certain things. One thing that always seems to be a very low priority is cleaning the inside of the refrigerator. That doesn't necessarily mean that there are lower life forms residing in my fridge. I do keep that part of the fridge under control, not to mention most things get eaten around here before they have a chance to go bad. However, sometimes you get crumbs or spill spots or unidentified dirt on the shelves or in the drawer of the fridge. That is the part of refridg. cleaning that I don't get to as often I like. The other day I had a little revelation and I was trying to dismantle the small drawer where we keep lunchmeats and cheeses . I was a bit disgusted as I was doing it because of how hard it was to take the drawer apart! I don't have time for this to take so long!! I had a small window of time and thought it would be easy enough to take the drawer out, wash it, dry it, and put it back. oh-ho, not so! You can't just slide the drawer out, no, that would be too easy. You have to take the entire shelf out that it is attached to and then take it apart (after jerking it around a bit). As I was struggling, it occured to me..."So what if you don't get the whole refridg. cleaned out in one day!! Why not just do one or two shelves/drawers a day until its complete?" Hey, ya, why not?? Who says that you have to do everything all at once? Is your family going to care if you take 3 days to do it since they never seem to care or notice if its dirty in the first place?? (doubtful) So, that's exactly what I've been doing and it turned out great. I love a clean refridgerator, I love being able to see clearly through the glass at the things in my drawers. It removed so much pressure from myself by changing my mindset and I still accomplished the same end result. Now it is one of my goals to go through the chorelist for myself and the children and figure out where I can apply the same idea. I love getting things organized, but sometimes it can be painful getting there! I guess the old saying rings true... "No pain, No gain."