I am a bibliophile. I don’t just enjoy reading books — I enjoy shuffling them around and organizing them. I have an extensive nonfiction library, as well as quite a bit of nonfiction. I love it when someone talks about something they are interested in and I get to say, “I have a book on that, if you’d like to borrow it.”
I have seven five-shelf bookcases, two three-shelf bookcases, and an eight-shelf bookcase. And if I had more space in the house, I’d have more shelves. The kids have their own bookcases.
[Continue reading Cataloging Books (or Movies, or CDs)]
I was at a loss for a subject for “Works for Me Wednesday” today, so I asked my 15 year-old daughter. She had a quick answer: “A fruit bowl that can’t be a mixing bowl!”
Our Fruit Bowl
You see, every time I buy a nice fruit bowl to put out on our kitchen island, I end up snagging it for a mixing bowl. And then I end up with no place to put the fruit – which apparently really annoys my daughter!
Recently I was in a TJ Maxx store, and saw this
[Continue reading A fruit bowl that WON’T function as a mixing bowl!]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rocknroll_guitar/ / CC BY 2.0
My mother has always used index cards for all sorts of notes. She always has a little bundle clipped together with a binder clip in her purse, and she’ll whip it out to record how much she spent on lunch, or to note something she wants to mention to my uncle next time she speaks with him. Her grocery lists are kept on index cards, and a running to-do list, as well. She’ll even tape an index card to her front door to
[Continue reading Index cards]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
When I’m running out of the house for a gallon of milk and eggs and one of my kids says, “Oh, Mom, we also need peanut butter,” they are used to me responding with “One run purple racehorse…”
My ex-father-in-law taught me this memory trick over 20 years ago, and I still use it almost daily. He told me he learned it at a Dale Carnegie workshop, and I believe him, but any search I come up with on the web doesn’t mention purple racehorses, so
[Continue reading One Run Purple Racehorse]

I thought everyone did this, but in the past two weeks, I’ve had two different people say they’ve never heard of it, so I’ll mention it here.
Instead of buying those “garbage disposal fresheners” at the store that smell like lemon, just drop a used lemon peel into your garbage disposal once a week and run the disposal. It’ll clean your disposal and make your kitchen smell lovely, and you’re just using something you would have thrown away anyway.
Posted to Works for Me Wednesday
Continue reading Cleaning the garbage disposal]
