Domestic Disasters

Jun 3

Pasta Take Two.

So I wound up throwing away the friendly colored pasta because as my friend Alex pointed out, it looked cute but not edible-cute.

With Alex as my guide, I tried again today, but didn’t make it very far:

It totally fell all over the floor when I was trying to transport it from cardboard box to kitchen. Lame.

Alex wound up cooking dinner while I tried on dresses.

I didn’t make this. But it was delicious.

…next time I plan to actually make it to the stove, at least.

Jun 1

I Made Pasta!

Okay so I haven’t gone grocery shopping yet, but tonight I cooked.

That’s because two days ago I finally did my dishes which means I can finally use my sink, and also because I was supposed to meet two of my friends, but I was too lazy to get re-dressed again today plus I got distracted by some really good books about symbolist art, fantasies of female evil in the late 19th century, and this one totally strange book about occultism that I found in my apartment lobby. Now YOU try to have those right in front of you and not get distracted while you’re about to get dressed.

Anyway, once I finally realized that I basically stood my friends up even though I didn’t MEAN to, I also realized that I didn’t have anything to do for the evening.

So I made pasta for the second time in my life!

I sprinkled dried basil all over it to make it look not so boring. But I still thought it didn’t look as good as it COULD. And while raiding my cupboard for the first time since I moved in, I got a better idea…

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TADAA!!!!!

After I did all that though, I wasn’t even hungry anymore and also, colored noodles are pretty unappetizing. The pasta consistency was kind of hard/gooey/sticky anyway so I just stuck the noodles in the fridge to hopefully put sauce on them tomorrow or something.

nikhak asked: how come i can't find a link to add and follow you?

<3,nikhak (aka organizeme)

Hi there!

I’m still trying to figure out html, but try again because I think I may have fixed it?

Thanks for stopping by!

May 30

Ghosts of Cooking Past…

…

May 24

…more of the laundry situation. Sometimes I wonder if I am disorganized beyond repair.

May 23

My laundry situation. I plan to do my laundry very soon.

We all have our priorities.

In December, my brother Ryan Shamzies was helping me move out of my apartment and I asked him to help me pack up my dishware.

We pack up my 4 red and 3 white wine glasses, my whiskey decanter, 10 rocks glasses, 8 highball glasses, 5 champagne flutes, 4 cocktail glasses, 2 coffee mugs, 2 cordial glasses, and 12 shot glasses, when it occurs to him:

“Wait a sec, Meliss- do you not have any plates?”

“…no?”

We look around the kitchen and it occurs to me that he’s right: I do not have any plates. I have a fork, a broken plastic bowl, a big knife to cut oranges for drinks and a small knife to cut limes/lemons for drinks, a corkscrew and a can/bottle opener. Hmmm.

5 months later I have now remedied this situation slightly because I remembered that there were two plates inside this picnic kit my mom gave me for my birthday last year. My bowl is still broken, but when everyone was moving out of the dorms a few weeks ago, there was a bunch of kitchen stuff they were tossing out so now I have lots of cute mismatched silverware. Yippee.

…and look! This photo inspired me to clean my new silverware. The rest of the dishes (and by “dishes”, I guess I mean “glasses”) are still in the sink. But hey, progress.

May 22

Brunch: an excellent diversion strategy.

Today the plan was to go grocery shopping but before I was even awake, I got a text from my dear friend Alexander asking if I wanted to go to brunch.

“Brunch” is an excellent way to not go grocery shopping but still eat delicious food. So I agreed.

We ate at Nolita House, where they have bluegrass music and complimentary sangria with an entree during brunch hours!!

Alex ordered the huevos rancheros (which hold a mythological status within our social network), and I ordered something that I can’t remember what it was called but it had ratatouille in it and Alex (who is extraordinarily well-versed in culinary affairs) told me it would be good and he was right.

Best of all, it was HUGE so even after we both had some, I got to take it home so that I didn’t have to go grocery shopping!

May 21

Here’s a taste of what my apartment looks like right now. I plan to clean it, but in the mornings I’m late to get to somewhere and in the evenings I’m too tired.

May 20

Supportive Text Messages:

(1252 am): I made a blog about how I suck at cooking and cleaning.
(1253 am): Hahaha that u do!!!
(1255 am): thanks.
(100 am): But ur good at drinking.

May 19

This is the dish-state-of-affairs in my life.

I haven’t washed them since the semester ended, but I plan to very soon.

I have this cool book called Organizing Solutions for People with Attention Deficit Disorder, and it breaks down home-organizing tasks into very manageable mini-projects. One of these mini-projects is to severely limit the number of dishes you own, so that there are fewer dishes to pile up in the sink. I think this is smart, so I plan to investigate my dish-surplus situation right after I get around to actually washing them.

Yesterday, I tried to break down the overwhelming dish-washing task into manageable mini-dish-washing tasks, by washing only ONE dish each time I passed by the sink. Seems like it woulda been a fun game, but frankly, it got irritating really fast because I move around a lot and kind of didn’t want to keep getting interrupted by DISHES every 30 seconds.

May 17

What I did instead of grocery shop:

I was going to go grocery shopping today but the weather was SO nice so I did some outdoorsy park things with friends instead. Then I was on my way to the store but this city is so much fun to walk around when it’s nice out so I wound up doing that for like 3 hours longer than I should have.

I didn’t go to the grocery store but I did go to Staples to get some trays to hold papers and while I was there I got these super cute fridge magnets that were on sale for $1.99:

I didn’t want to do the dishes that have been sitting in the sink so instead, I spent some time rearranging the fridge clips for visual pleasurability:

I figured they’d not only inspire me to go into my kitchen area of my apartment, but they’d also make me more organized because I can efficiently hang things from them.

The magnets aren’t very strong though so everything I tried to clip to them was too heavy and made them fall.

Lame.