Bathroom Closet Organization; or, Novel Uses for Shoe Organizers

I like for things to be organized.  It makes me feel good, and it calms some vaguely panicky nerve in the back of my mind that whispers, "something is unsettled."  Clearly abnormal, I know.  However, for the last few months, every closet in our house has been is a state of unsettled disarray.  I finally got around to tackling the bathroom/linen closet. (Pantry, you are next!)

I can't believe that I am showing the messy contents of my closet, but, you have to see the "before" to get the big picture.  Since I have organizational inclinations, I own things like fabric bins.  I also have some genetic impulse to save things that I don't necessarily need, like old shoe boxes and college-era shower caddies.  So, a fairly cobbled-together organizational system that isn't really working.  I especially like that the shoe box holding our meds is sitting askew on top of toothpaste and contact lenses.  Nice.

First, I pulled everything out.  Here, you really get the full effect.  Lots of stuff.  In random collections.  Although I love having the closet where it is, it can be a bit annoying because it is both deep and narrow.  I got the idea for using a pocket shoe organizer from a YouTube channel called HomeOrganizing.  The woman in the video uses hers on the back of a bifold door, but, of course, it works just as well on a regular door.  The only problem I had with mine is that it was wider than the door, so I had to fold one column of pockets back.  It is still functional, it just doesn't look as nice as it would on a wider door.  

I sorted everything into various categories by row and then by pocket.  So now, I have a pocket that just holds headache meds; one pocket just for sunscreen; etc.  I would like to find a way to label the pockets, but I haven't quite figured that out yet.  The two fabric bins went back on the shelf: the larger one has oversized items, like the packages of cotton balls and cotton swabs.  The smaller bin contains beauty products that I consider "seasonal"--I'm not wearing bright pink nail polish in winter, so there is no point in keeping it with my regular makeup.  Overall, I really like the outcome.  Now, our sheets are on a shelf all by themselves (by the way, placing your folded set of sheets into one of the pillowcases keeps everything neat and together).  I can access everything and know exactly where it is.

Here is a little bonus shot of my vanity drawer.  It is really shallow, but it works for this type of stuff.  The white bins came from Wal-Mart and the clear ones came from Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

So, it seems a bit strange to be showing off my closets and drawers, but I thought the shoe organizer was a really useful tip, so I wanted to pass it along.  Anyone have any special tricks for organizing bathroom items?

Help Me Guess What's Growing in My Yard!

It's time to play "Help Me Guess What's Growing in My Yard!"  Since we moved into our new house in August, we haven't had a lot of time to pay much attention to the yard.  The previous owners were fond of plants (though not necessarily of landscaping or design), and the property is covered with a variety of plants, particularly shrubs and ornamental trees.  Jordan's dad identified a few things for us, but others remain a mystery.  So, I am looking for help--do you recognize any of these?

Housekeeping Routines

I considered starting here with a little philosophical musing about housekeeping--I do, after all, specialize in domestic fiction and wrote my master's thesis on a novel called Recollections of a Housekeeper.  But, if you indicate that you are interested in housekeeping, people often suppose that you are very strange (I may be) and have a freakishly clean house (I don't).  So, I will dispense with (most of) the musing and get to the basics.  Most people do some housekeeping.  I am generally interested in how people do it. I think those manuals and descriptions from the 19th century on housekeeping practices (or domestic economy, as it was sometimes called) are fascinating.

My favorite modern-day housekeeping tome is Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House (Scriber, 1999).  The book is a wonderful reference guide, nearly 900 pages long with answers for nearly every conceivable quandary on laundering, polishing, laying out, and making up that you could imagine.  My favorite chapter is the first, in which Mendelson writes of her "secret life."  She writes, "An off-and-on lawyer and professor in public, in private I launder and clean, cook from the hip, and devote serious time and energy to a domestic routine not so different from the one that defined my grandmothers as 'housewives'" (3).  She goes on to describe those grandmothers, one of Italian ancestry and the other of British Isles descent who are equal in their passion for domestic arts, though they often conflicted on ideas of airing beds or ironing shirts.  Ultimately, housekeeping seems to be part of identity--how we do things tells us something about who we are and where we come from; but the purpose is unifying--we all seem to clean house because we enjoy having a comfortable, welcoming space in which to live.

So domestic routines both create comfort, and to some (myself included) are comforting in themselves.  When I was younger, I learned the nineteenth-century housekeeping litany from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books: Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Mend on Wednesday, Churn on Thursday, Clean on Friday, Bake on Saturday, Rest on Sunday.  While some of these activities are obsolete (or have become hobbies, rather than chores), the idea of having a list of daily tasks makes sense.  I have tried the other method--clean when it gets dirty--but have found it to be far more exhausting than a pre-emptive routine.  After much experimentation, this is now my weekly routine:

Monday: Clean the Kitchen, Buy Groceries
Tuesday: Laundry (Clothes)
Wednesday: Dust and Vacuum
Thursday: Laundry (Sheets and Towels)
Friday: Clean Bathrooms, Buy Groceries

These activities are, of course, supplements to the daily "neatening" tasks of putting away items and making beds and so on. This list is specific to my needs, as it's just my husband and myself in a small apartment.  I put the lighter tasks (laundry) on Tuesdays and Thursdays because those are usually teaching days for me.  My very least favorite task is planning meals--for some reason, my brain freezes up and I look with dread at the refrigerator and drag my feet on the way to the grocery store.  It has become somewhat easier since I go to the store twice a week now.  Instead of having to plan seven meals, I plan meals for Monday through Thursday, and then Friday through Sunday.

I don't always get through the week perfectly, but it is easy enough to catch up and Saturday morning is a good time to pick up any tasks that were missed during the week, but your whole day isn't spent in drudgery.

So, what are your domestic routines?  Any tips on making meal planning less painful?  Any thoughts on housekeeping as identity? 

Defining Domesticity

The term domesticity hardly seems to need defining. It is not commonly used in everyday parlance, but can quickly be intentified as a derivative of "domestic," which is rather more commonly used. People talk about "being domestic" as in "I am going to be domestic this weekend and do some laundry." On the other end, domesticity as a concept and lifestyle seems to have been assigned solely to stay at home mothers and Martha Stewart disciples. Certainly, there is more to it than this.

Domesticity has a historical context. In the nineteenth century, domesticity was seen as the realm of middle and upper class white women in Britain and America. It indicated wifehood and motherhood as the management of the home as the role for women. Clearly, today, this is problematic, and helps to explain the knee-jerk reaction that many people have when they hear the term domesticity, equating it with oppression and sexism. As Nina Baym says in Woman's Fiction, "domesticity is equated with entrapment" (26). This short-changes the concept of home and family and how women can relate to them. In the nineteenth century, domestic fiction was actually empowering. Prior to the emergence of the genre, most fiction about female characters followed a common plot, one in which women were invariable made into victims; sentimental fiction or novels of sensibility focused on women who were innately good and pious but who are somehow abused, betrayed, seduced, and abandoned. While these novels were perhaps useful in illuminating the plight of women, the fates of these female characters was less than inspiring, usually involving insanity, death, or insanity and then death. In the best cases, the woman was able to reform the rake who was attempting to seduce her, although this makes for questionable husband-material (see Richardson's Pamela).

Domestic fiction, on the other hand, written by women, refused to imagine women as victims. These writers "were unwilling to accept, and unwilling to permit their readers to accept, a concept of woman as inevitable sexual prey" (26). Instead, women had power over the home, and the home was the center of the world. The domestic arrangement and the happy home was the "acme of human bliss." While domestic fiction is often linked to the concept of separate spheres, such a term is perhaps misleading. The home is not cordoned away from the "real world" of the market and public interactions, but instead "everybody was to be placed in the home, and hence, home and the world would become one." This has significant implications for female power: "to the extent that woman dominated the home, the ideology implied an unprecedented historical expansion of her influence" (27).

How does this function today? Do we see domesticity as oppressive? or is there something still empowering in domesticity? In a post-feminist society, does the concept of the domestic world raise hackles or are we seeing an increasing return to home as people become disenchanted with the public realm?