Vindication

I love great solutions to every day dilemmas. You know those times when you suddenly find an "AHA" use for a tool, or a different place to put something that makes so much more sense than where you have had it for the last 12 years? Yep, that's what I'm talking about. There's something deliciously satisfying about enjoying the fact, that now, your ironing board and iron are on one hook in the closet where you keep your coats, because it makes more sense than fighting with it in the vacuum closet.

I also love sharing solutions that I have found. You know - great products that work really well on mildew, or the fastest way to make spaghetti and meatballs, or the best place to go if you want professional printing.

My sister who is just a little older than I has been the recipient of many of my 'great' ideas. She is very patient with me and allows me to go on and on about these great ideas I have happened upon.

One time I decided that she didn't have the right spices. She had poppy seed (lots of it), salt and pepper and about a teaspoon of curry. Her birthday was coming up soon after my visit, so I sent her matching spice-filled jars for her present. I think there were about twelve. Since she lives so far from me, our face-to-face visits are few and far between. Imagine my surprise when I came back several years later to find the spice jars just as full as when I sent them to her.

What a great lesson. Everyone has their own systems of what works for them. Just because I think it's a great idea, doesn't mean that it would be workable for others. After that, I tried to be more open-ended when talking to my sister about my great solutions. I used phrases like "This is so great...but only try it if you think it will work". "I have found something that works so well for mopping the floor. Perhaps you can't get it where you live though. If you want me to research it more, let me know".

As I said, she's very patient with me...and I'm sure that occasionally I still overstep my bounds, but she'll just let me talk and then does what she wants anyway. Several years after the 'spice incident', I discovered wooden hangers. I was watching some organizing show, and they took all the mish-mash of hangers out of this person's closet, and replace them with matching wooden hangers. Such a simple idea but you wouldn't believe the difference it made. So off I went to restock my house with wooden hangers. WOW! I loved it! They each had a little wooden bar so you could hang pants on them as well. And the clothes looked great (actually, they were pretty old, so they still didn't look great, but the hangers made them look uniform and organized).

In the next visit to my sister, I mentioned how great this was. I usually buy a little something for her as a hostess gift and I said that I would love to help her buy wooden hangers. She didn't say much. She didn't have to. Her eyes said it all. "Thanks, but I'd rather have a root canal".

So I withdrew the idea.

Still it didn't deter me from continuing to share my "AHA" ideas with her. On a subsequent visit, I was putting away dishes for her and her Tupperware lids were all askew. I decided to get a basket for them and put them in stacked vertically. This was an idea that she liked. And I liked it so much that I went home and bought myself one too. Now I can find all the lids in one spot. Easy peasy, nice and breezy! A stroke of brilliance!

But wait, there's more! A year or so after the "Tupperware aha", I was grousing to her about how I hated the way that my pot drawer was put together. "Not enough room" I said. "Too many pots" I said. "I hate how the lids get stuck at the back of the drawer" I said.

My sister is a person who can make her point in very few words. "Why don't you store the lids in a basket?" she said. I think she felt vindicated.