I'm working on it.

This could've been a post about my failed, "too-cool-for-east-coast-sense-we're-from-cali-y'all" diaper bag purchase. And maybe one day I will post about that ... I do after all, have a tag for things I hate. But in a springtime fueled effort to focus on the positive, I thought I could rave for a bit about something I love. And the latest in the long (yet somehow not nearly touted enough) list of those things is my brand new, finally got it right, Skip*Hop diaper bag.

Seems like the impossible task. The one thing that I can't do. Everything.

The logical me that I want to be:
Of course it's impossible. Nobody can do everything. Nobody can finish everything. Besides, what would you do then? When everything was finished? Relax? Why not relax now? Make it part of your day - your schedule. You know, include some downtime amid the moments you dedicate to trying unsuccessfully to be everything you think makes life perfect. After all, you know there's no such thing as perfect here.

Things are much better than 2 months ago. They are. Really. You're making progress everywhere - look at your living room. Look at your bedroom. The bathrooms are both relatively clean - not just clean, but disinfected. You've started to communicate some of the stuff you've been hiding for awhile. And, you learned how to operate the lawn mower. This is big stuff. This is good.

Stop worrying so much, and stop believing that you can finish everything on your growing list this second. That is not how life works.

The me that I am:
Sure, that's easy. That's the cop out, isn't it? "Nobody is perfect."

Of course - nobody is perfect. But lots of people have organized homes. Lots of people don't worry all the time about what's for dinner because they already know. They've taken care of it. They're on top of things.

They're wives with great marriages and happy husbands, they're mothers with happy, well cared for children on great sleep schedules, they're friends who have lunch and send cards and work out and have people over for dinner and go to church and take classes and have their hair and nails done and are happy.

Oh. And employed. They're making money for their families. For themselves.

And you? You are sitting here posting some emotional crap on a blog nobody reads while you should be finishing up any of the five hundred things you've already fallen behind on today. Plus, that relaxing stuff? Haven't you been resting long enough? Haven't you fixed yourself by now?

Things I love, Part 2 in a series, continues with . . . the space bag!

Yeah, I know. But the infomercials get me every time. Sometimes I get stuck watching them for hours. It was worse pre-parenthood, because then, I had hours of free time to sit around doing nothing. Back in the day, those late-night spots always managed to hook me. Needless to say, I've seen just about any product of this nature you can think of, and I've contemplated the purchase of many of them. (My husband just thanks heaven that we don't own the Little Giant and Mighty Putty yet.)

Typically, I'm not a fan of catalog ordering, tv shopping, or the like, although if it's online, I have no issues with making an unseen purchase (evidence of my over-dependence on and trust in the medium?). And even though I have no intention of buying these items, I watch the 'shows' over and over. Could be I'm lulled into a semi-conscious state by the practiced voices of the hosts, could be that those mesmerizing lights; either way, I watch and take note, and can later recite all the virtues of said product to my leery and slightly bored husband.

All this to say that thanks to our beloved Target, I can now inspect some of this TV product for myself. And that's exactly what I did with the item known in organized circles as the space bag. I was skeptical but intrigued. Could it really make more space for me?

The answer, folks is YES! In fairness, I'm a first time user, and I've only been using for about 20 minutes. So we'll see how these things hold up over time. But, if first impressions are everything, I am Impressed with the "Big letter I". I've had 4 big bags of too-small-for-our-angel baby-clothes sitting around in the closet for several months. Each time she outgrows something, I add it to the top of the bags. The bags were nearly bursting from the strain of holding in so many clothes. But not anymore.

This morning I was able to get all 4 bags worth of clothes into 2, count 'em 2, medium-sized space bags. With the air sucked out, they take up about 6 inches of vertical space.

Sometimes things work out well. Chalk one up for me today, and one for the Space Bag. I'll be a repeat customer for sure.

I suppose that most people already know about the goodness that is color-safe bleach. I suppose that many people, people smarter than me, have already experienced the joy that is seeing spaghetti sauce come right out of a navy and white striped shirt. And I'm certain that I am nowhere near the first wife and mother to shout with glee as a particular article of clothing comes out of the wash minus the offending stain ( . . . that wouldn't have been there in the first place if you'd just listened to me, I mean I've told you fifty-million times, well, ok, 50 times then, but I've told you that you must rinse that stuff out immediately, and what the h about a bib already? . . . ).

I admit and accept that I'm a bit slow on this uptake.

But folks, the truth is hard to ignore - even if it's a commonly known one. Color-safe bleach is the savior of laundry and stain-tired women everywhere.

Let me paint you a picture of my laundry-life up until a few days ago:**

Baby-clothes, mounds and mounds of tiny socks and bloomers and jammies and shirts multiply like mogwai each night while I sleep. And I mean multiply by enough to need washing nearly every day. For the record, it's a lot of washing and a lot more folding. Add to that record that somehow, every single piece of clothing is stained with something. Yes, I said every piece.

How the cheese sauce ends up on the bottom of her bloomers is beyond my ability to discern. But it's there, and it's ground in good. There are stains on her shirts, and stains on her shorts and stains on her socks and so many stains on her bibs I'm embarrassed to put them on the child in public. And many of these stains, mind you, have not been rinsed or pre-treated or even blotted off.

So every couple of days, you could find me hunched over the utility sink (thank God for that) in our laundry room with a pile of tiny garments and a bottle of stain remover. There I'd stand, spraying, scrubbing, rinsing, praying and attempting to cajole those worn in stains out of the fibers of the clothes. A lot of the time, I could get the marks out, but most of the time, this process took hours. And at the end of it, I was sore from being stooped over and cranky from breathing in the chemicals.

And then, world, then I discovered Clorox 2.

It looks like detergent. It even smells like detergent, and thankfully, not like regular, chlorine bleach (though I have to admit that the Lavender scented one hubby recently brought home is a huge improvement in that vein). You can add it right to your washer with your regular laundry soap. It brightens colors. And, it whitens whites! But the key thing for me is that it gets stains out of colored clothes, and that is currently one of the best parts of my week.

My laundry life now still involves large piles and many loads of dirty baby-clothes. But the agonizing hours of bending and scrubbing have been reduced to a matter of minutes. The moments of worry during especially messy dinner times have nearly faded, and it's now rare to hear the phrase, 'well, that's ruined' coming from my lips.

Clorox 2 is a life-saver. And for that, it takes it's place as a thing I love.


** In the interest of full disclosure, it must be noted that while my laundry life before the introduction of C2 was disheartening, it was not as awful as that of other women who are not married to a husband who actually does the laundry. During my 'mothering' season of the last few months, I've taken over that responsibility; however, it must be noted that during the first 4.3 years of our marriage, that amazing man washed nearly all of our stuff.