Andy really likes grapefruits. So, as a housewarming or maybe college graduation gift, my mom bought him a couple of grapefruit spoons. You know, these little guys: A regular looking spoon with a serrated edge, meant to let you dig into the individual sections of a grapefruit when it’s cut in half.

This would seem to be great fodder for Unclutterer’s Unitasker Wednesday series, although not a horrific offender because they’re so small.

BUT! I have found that they’re pretty useful for miscellaneous other things! In fact, I’ve rarely if ever used one on an actual grapefruit.

Some of the tasks I’ve pulled out the grapefruit spoon for to good success include scraping the seeds out of a jalapeno pepper and scooping the flesh cleanly out of an avocado.

These aren’t major kitchen tasks, but it’s nice having a tool that does them so well! As weird as it sounds, the grapefruit spoon works for me.

Have you found any unconventional uses for items that might seem friviolous?

I’m linking up to Works for Me Wednesday at WeAreThatFamily.com!

 

Tax season is just about upon us! I am fairly clueless about taxes and am extremely fortunate to be married to a man with a great head on his shoulders about money. But being clueless is not healthy or useful in a lot of situations! I bet some of you are overwhelmed about the thoughts of filing your taxes, too, especially as I know many of you are young and might be filing on your own for the first time. I have a tax professional willing to answer some of your most pressing tax questions! What would you like to know about the tax filing process or taxes in general? Please keep your questions broad so that they’ll be applicable to a variety of people–if you have along list of specific or personal questions, you might need to call in reinforcements. :-)

I think I’m sort of obsessed with Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project in the way that some people get obsessed with a TV series or fiction writer. I first read her book almost 2 years ago and, to be honest, I didn’t get into it at first. Gretchen sort of annoyed me: her resolutions seemed so virtuous, and she was so meticulous and good about tracking them and following through with them. I was bothered by the concept of a happiness project because I felt like I could never do anything like it.

But as I read more of the book (for whatever reason, I felt compelled to carry on), I realized that part of why Gretchen bugged me is because, well, I’m sort of just like her in a lot of ways. Once I relaxed about it, I found myself really enjoying her project and even cheering for her. I then started following her blog, which has great nuggets of happiness truth, and I’ve been to hear her speak. She was so much nerdier and dorkier than I envisioned, and it only endeared her to me more! It felt like listening to someone you really like talk, and it’s clear she’s so passionate about this whole happiness thing that the lecture didn’t feel like a lecture at all. So anyway, I’m pretty much obsessed with Gretchen Rubin and her happiness project.

I still don’t feel like I can do a full-blown project of my own, but using happiness as a frame of reference has been good as I reflect on day-to-day life. I’ve blogged before about my book club, which was somewhat inspired by her truth that “What’s fun for you isn’t necessarily fun for other people and vice versa,” as well as other related concepts, like her Secrets of Adulthood.

As I was washing the dishes the other night, somewhat begrudgingly, I must admit, I had a flash: this isn’t particularly fun right now, but the happiness boost I’ll get from having it done later (and seeing the kitchen clean) will be well worth it. That felt Happiness Project-esque to me.

And as I’ve pondered that realization, I think I’ve come up with a happiness resolution:

Do one thing every day that I don’t have to do.

I am extremely duty-driven. Often that fact that something needs to be done is enough motivation to power me through doing it. But lately I’ve been finding that I’ve felt more grudging about these tasks, things like doing the laundry and going grocery shopping. Grudging is not a productive emotion. It’s not like I want Andy to take over the laundry and the grocery shopping. In fact, I specifically want to be the one in our family who does these things. So what good is it for me to feel grumpy about them? I’ve been trying to be more conscious of my attitude when I announce that I’m going to the store or the laundry room, and it’s been helping to remember that I ultimately am glad to be in charge of these tasks, but it’s still hard to get to the end of a day and feel like everything I did that day was just out of utility, that nothing I did was fun or just for me.

So I’m going to try to add small things that are not required. (And I hope that by trying to add them they don’t start feeling required.) I really am not sure what these things might be. Unfortunately, most of the things I can think of require spending money: stopping to get a fancy coffee drink, getting a pedicure, buying a new shirt, or renting a chick flick to watch online. And things like watching a chick flick and getting a pedicure take a fair amount of time, which is often of the essence. But I feel confident that there are things I can do that will make me happy that don’t need to be done. It’s my goal to figure out what some of them are and incorporate them into my life on a more regular basis.

What are some little happiness boosters in your life? Do you spend much time consciously considering your happiness level?

Follow Friday is a hashtag on Twitter. Hashtags are markers that catalog tweets from any number of users into a stream of related information that you can search. So, if you tag a tweet #FF (for Follow Friday), it will show up in the list of all tweets tagged “#FF.” This is particularly interesting or informative if you’re hashtagging an event or a place, for example, because then you can quickly look and see what others have to say about the thing you’re participating in. or the place you’re visiting For instance, I enjoyed checking out the tweets during the Miss America Pageant. Follow Friday’s directions are to “Tweet the names of Twitter users you’d like others to follow and tag it with #followfriday and/or #FF.”

I never really pay attention to the #FF tweets I see, and I’m fairly certain I’ve never actually followed anyone on the recommendation of an #FF. But lately, I’ve been wowed by several bloggers and really wanted to share them with you, so I thought I’d create a Follow Friday of my own this week here on the blog!

I’ve been reading blogs for years. Really, we could go all the way back to high school when I was into being emo on LiveJournal and Xanga, but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about. The real meat of my blog reading started in college; I’m not exactly sure what triggered it, but over the years I’ve curated a collection of feeds in Google Reader. These bloggers, whether I interact with them or not, are really a part of my life. If I’m away from my Reader for too long, I start to wonder what they’re up to. Sometimes I’m overzealous and subscribe to a bunch of blogs that don’t really do it for me after awhile, so I try to be intentional about culling my list pretty frequently. Lately I’ve been in a really good blog-reading groove and have found a few new voices who are adding a great feel to the posts I read every day!

Some of my current favorites:

• Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think I stumbled across this blog from MoneySavingMom.com. She writes about time management and work, and is much more career oriented than most of the blogs I read. From the description I wouldn't have thought I'd like her blog, but I find so many useful little tips and tricks and find that I really relate to many of the things she talks about. Plus, I love Vanderkam's voice, which is almost as important to me in a blog as the actual topic! I find myself wanting to comments on her posts quite often, which is a big deal to a self-proclaimed passive consumer such as myself. Laura came and commented on this little blog once and I felt like hot stuff. ;-)
• Jessica at Faith Permeating Life I think I found Jessica through 20SB, a blog network that seemed promising but was really mostly a bust for me. Jessica is young and married like me, grappling with really tough issues of how Christianity relates to modern life, and I appreciate that she does it in a non-preachy way. Her blog is not deep and theological; it's deep and real. Plus, not EVERY post is heavy and faith-related. I love reading about her marriage and her forays into the world of exercise. I find Jessica really relatable and approachable, and I hope I get to read her blog for a long time!
• And for good measure, and actual Twitter account: Anne Lamott It's no secret that I love Anne Lamott. She doesn't have a blog that I know of, but she's quite active on Twitter. Y'all, just about every tweet she posts has me in stitches. I think it's a gift that her dry sarcasm even comes through in 140 characters. She's authentic and hilarious and her words stick with me long after I read them on Twitter. 

There you have it! My absolutely unsolicited, unorthodox Follow Friday.

Have you discovered any great new or new-to-you blogs or Twitter accounts lately? Share them in the comments!

I’ve been on an epic re-organizing kick lately. We’ve been in our apartment for just about 2 years now, and it’s easy to get comfortable in that time period. You know, the stuff we moved in that was so nicely culled and organized has expanded, and the places where things live are slightly less defined. We’re not moving this year (yay! less hassle!), but I sort of mentally wanted to act like we were moving and sort through all of our stuff and get it into configurations that work well for every day use. Because, while being in one place for awhile can leave your stuff feeling cluttered, it also affords you the advantage of having time to figure out what your stuff-related needs are and what layouts work well for you.

I found a definition of clutter from Unclutterer that I think is apt: “Stuff that sits around serving no purpose is clutter.” It ties in nicely the household mantra I picked up from Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project:

Img source: http://lovechicliving.co.uk/design-quote-william-morris/

The “useful” part is easy. I have a pile right now to take to the thrift store that includes a blender, our George Foreman grill that I used to love but have since decided doesn’t do anything I can’t do on a skillet, an electric kettle that was made redundant by one of Andy’s Christmas gifts, 3 shirts, a lamp that was taking up space but never got used, and a rolling plastic cart with drawers. For an 830 square foot apartment, those are relatively big ticket items! We got a new stand for our printer, so it’s off the floor, and the stand ties in so nicely with our desk and book shelf! I was amazed at how nice I find that area now, and also amazed at how big a difference the small open space on the floor made in the feel of our living room. I stacked our games neatly out in the open in a Gretchen Rubin-esque shrine to fun and games (from her book Happier at Home). I’m also in the process of getting rid of the unused bike and bike rack that takes up a big stretch of wall right when you walk into the apartment and replacing it with some sort of bar or liquor cabinet. That will allow me to rearrange glassware storage and make better use of some of the cabinets we already have. Plus, I think it could be beautiful if I choose wisely! I’m not  through purging yet, and I have some thoughts on organizing the cabinet that I recently said was the bane of my existence that I haven’t carried out yet, but I’m off to a good start.

I’m working on the “beautiful” part of the mantra. So far I’ve been thinking about this in terms of added bits of whimsy. When you live in a small space, much of what you have has to be useful, so it’s hard to think of having things just for beauty’s sake. But little touches, like a bright ribbon tied around the bedside lamp or a candle lit in the bathroom, can make a big difference. So I’m keeping an eye out for places to infuse my utility with color, which is a big part of beauty for me.

I’m not 100% there yet, but I’ve found a household mantra that works for me!

 

I’m linking up to Works for Me Wednesday at WeAreThatFamily.com!