My Tireless Retirement - Week 37

 

Good morning Friends!  I hope you are doing well.  The final week before Christmas is upon us.  I plan to do a little baking, a little cooking, a lot of celebrating and truly enjoy this beautiful holiday. There are gifts under my tree, food in my cupboards, my home is warm and lovely, I am blessed beyond measure.

 

My girls patiently waiting for me to bring them goodies

Decluttering is messy business and by Monday it was starting to drive me crazy.  I made a lot of progress over the previous two weeks and it feels really good, but I had to stop and clean up the mess I had made.  Having things put back in order felt really good too.  Fortunately, my 15 Minute Housekeeping regimen kept the house clean while I was working on this project, it was mostly a matter of tidying up where I had been doing all the sorting and reorganizing.

 

Makes me happy 💝

I decluttered the crisper drawer in the refrigerator by using up the two partial heads of cabbage, a carrot, some green onions and a piece of a yellow onion as well as a half package of leftover lunchmeat, all of which needed to be used up before it spoiled.  I chopped it all up and cooked it in my electric skillet with some leftover oil I had from making the tortilla chips on Nacho Nite and some rendered bacon fat I had in the fridge.  Because it wasn't a lot of meat I beat up a couple eggs to go in there for extra protein and then added a cup of cooked rice I had leftover from making Broccoli Beef for supper the previous week.  I seasoned it with soy sauce and minced garlic and just before serving drizzled some sesame oil over the top.  I also had a little bit of leftover sweet chili sauce to use as a very flavorful garnish.  I love when I can take a bunch of leftovers and create an entirely different meal out of them.  It was delicious!  There was enough for four meals too, so leftover leftovers.

 

Not a bad meal for a bunch of leftovers

Speaking of Nacho Nite, it was so good we ended up having another one this past week as well.  Along with a glass of wine and a couple Christmas movies it made for a really nice evening.  Funny thing, I had leftover tortillas to fry up for chips, taco meat, cheese, sliced green onions, olives, sour cream and salsa so technically it was just another "decluttering project" (wink, wink).

 

These were delish!

I was able to get all of my errands run well ahead of the snowstorm and cold front that moved in on us Wednesday afternoon.  I headed out that morning to pick up a few groceries at Fred Meyer and then ended up at Wal-Mart for some more specific sized containers for organizing.  Fred Meyer's selection of storage bins was crap and grossly overpriced.  

Mostly dairy this time

Even some items on markdown - cottage cheese & sour cream

I got one snap tight lid container to keep all of my laces and trims in for my sewing and crafting supplies.  I needed one larger than the one I already had.  I also picked up two of the shoe box size containers with the snap tight lids to organize my baking supplies and cookie cutters and another one to hold my hand mixer and immersion blender plus their attachments, spending less than $20.  I love having things neater and more organized.  I also purged a bunch of stuff while I was at it.

 

I might actually be able to find stuff!

I gathered up all of my jars of spent candles, removed the leftover wax, melted it down and made one candle out of that.  All of the empty jars ended up in the glass recycling bin clearing off a shelf in my hall closet and I got a FREE candle in the process.

 

I filled up another trash bag as well the recycling collection bin and topped up the glass recycling bin I keep in the garage.  Donation bag number four is now half full and I placed another set of those plastic drawers out to go to the thrift store too.  My house is getting bigger!  I hear some of you are working on some decluttering too.  How's it going?