It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. - Eleanor Roosevelt

If only I had every minute I spent looking around my apartment and my life wishing it was better organized, less cluttered, and purposeful. All that time could have just as easily been turned back into developing a plan on how to create organization, eliminate clutter, and have purpose. A plan guides action so the action isn’t wasted. A plan might help indicate areas of inefficiency, or stumbling blocks in the process.

Sometimes creating the plan itself is a trying process, but one very simple method is to jot down a simple definition of how each area of the living space is to be used.  For example, I love to cook, so my plan as it stands is to focus on making my kitchen more efficient and better able to store the staples of cooking.  Even with this simple plan in mind, I am able to better address the organization.  Since my goal isn’t to make it look pretty, I can do things that aren’t aesthetically pleasing but are pragmatic for the chore of cooking.

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go till you come to the end; then stop.” - Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)

Where to start is one of the hardest decisions to make when the goal is a full scale makeover of a living environment and the life that goes with it. The first thing to do is establish the priorities. Is there one area or another that is crying out for attention? Is the kitchen close to condemnation? Would Mom find the bathroom offensive? Is there little distinction between dirty laundry and clean laundry? Speaking of necessary distinctions, are the floors distinguishable from the ground outside? What about odors? Is there a lingering not-so-fresh scent that might indicate something is rotting in the couch? Identifying the key problems helps in developing a plan of attack.

Order is never observed; it is disorder that attracts attention because it is awkward and intrusive. - Eliphas Levi

It may be hard to determine the key problem areas. Consider the areas that play heavily on the mind. The areas that draw attention are quite possibly the areas in need of organizing, cleaning, or something. This trick works best when, unlike my apartment, the living space is mainly in an ordered state with only some adjustments needed to get it all aligned. This tip also helps in identifying areas to focus on during weekly cleaning.

I?m not fortunate enough to have this problem regarding my living space, but it does happen with my life. Like right now I spend a lot of time thinking about a friend of mine whom I?ve neglected to call for a long time. When I look over my entire life, while there are a lot of things I need to fix, this is standing out. This bit of social neglect on my part is causing me the greatest anxiety and needs to be addressed before all else.

I know that if I don?t, all other successes I have fixing everything else will be dwarfed by this huge failing.

We adore chaos because we love to produce order. - M. C. Escher

Last weekend I found a tiny bookcase in the alley behind my apartment. One of the benefits of living in Chicago is people throw out furniture all the time. The tiny bookcase was too small to really help do anything for my books, DVDs, or stuff like that, but it was perfect for putting in this area in my kitchen that is underused. I took several of my appliances that don’t get used often, like my blender, toaster, and coffee maker and put it on the shelf. I also emptied my cupboards which are in short supply to free up space for the items I use every day. So the cans of pureed tomatoes, cartons of oatmeal, and all sorts of other stuff got relegated to the bookcase. Since the location is slightly inconvenient, I had to make sure I didn’t put anything I use often there. Without all the appliances cluttering my main counter I find I have the wor...

The topic of untangling the complexity of life has been one that I’ve been struggling with lately.  It isn’t something I’ve mastered and is definitely something I want to get done.  Everything from how I keep and clean my apartment, to maintaining relationships, how I do my job, to my finances, and my health all need to be sorted out and properly managed.  I thought that this sort of project is exactly the kind of thing that deserves to be blogged, yet, I struggle with the idea of how to start.

I was blessed today with two great starting points.  The first comes from Threadbangers Decor It Yourself on Cleaning Your Closet.  Now this episode of this video show was released awhile ago, but I don’t keep up on the vidcasts as much as podcasts, so it is just happenstance that I watched it this morning.  The general concept of cleaning out your closets is to first empty your closets.  This is also the way the show Clean Sweep makes people deal with cleaning out the junk in their houses.

Once the closet is empty, the next step is sorting.  What wasn’t covered in the vidcast I linked to is the important element of getting rid of the stuff that is no longer used or needed.

The other fortuitous bit of information that came my way today is from The Simple Dollar on Making and Maintaining a Master Information Document.  For the last couple weeks I’ve been morbidly considering what would happen if I up and died.  I’m in my late 30’s no family who lives nearby, no significant other, no one that is established within my life who would know what all I have and what to do with it.  Then I realized that I right now don’t know what to do with all of my stuff.  Now I’m not talking about just the physical stuff, but the financial stuff and the simple commonplace stuff as well.

The article is brief but touches upon all the important elements I know I need to consider.

Using both of these projects, closet cleaning and Master Information Document creation, I think I have a good start on which threads to start pulling in order to untangle my life and begin the process of sorting it all out.

Every good relationship starts with good communication.  Or at least it sounds good to say that but it may not be the case.  A recent research study performed by researchers at Indiana University, examined almost 300 undergraduates of both sexes to determine their ability to detect sexual interest.  They were shown 280 photographs of women and were asked if the expression on the woman’s face was friendly, sexually interested, or rejecting.

Oddly enough, men often mistook friendly for sexually interested and sexually interested as friendly.

What does this mean to us men?  It means that when that woman we are friends with is acting like she is into us, she probably isn’t.  I have a lot of female friends who get frustrated that all their guy friends want to suddenly date and get upset over the fact that they received ‘mixed signals’.  Yeah, no mixed signals, they were just being friendly.

More to the point, it is critical for a man who wants to enter the world of dating and have some sense of accomplishment to understand the nuances of body language.  Calling some elements of body language ‘nuance’ is a complete understatement.  The following is a quick guide to body language:

1. She is looking at you.  This isn’t foolproof.  If you are wearing antlers and dancing on the bar in a drunken rendition of the Electric Slide, she may be looking at you, but probably not in a good way.  Unless she jumps up on the bar with you, it is safe to assume she is gaping at the car accident.  What is key is the look, look away, and look again move.  What is difficult is catching this without staring at her.  She may then be looking up to look at you to see if you are still staring.

2. The laugh.  Did you just say something mildly funny?  Maybe you retold a witticism you heard from Jon Stewart, or retold that one story about that one time when you were in that one place and she laughed, not a soft “I’m supposed to insert laughter here” laugh but a genuine laugh?  Then she is digging you.

3. The questions.  Does she seem to ask a lot of different questions about you?  Unless she is trying to fill the silence with idle chatter and is asking you questions about whether you think it will rain or not, there is a good chance that she is into you.  Women who are interested want to know about you and will ask questions and actually listen to the answers.  How do you know this is happening?  The follow-up question.

4. The touch.  This is huge.  Does she find a reason to touch you?  Touch your hand, fix your collar, or just lean against you if possible?  This is the riskiest move she can make from her perspective - initiating contact, but is the most commonly confused by men.  The subtle pretense she used to initiate the touch is often thought of as valid by the man.  Adjusting a shirt collar?  It needed to be adjusted.  Being leaned against?  That other person needed to walk by and she was just making room.  The touch on the arm in the midst of a conversation?  She is trying to get your attention so she can say something or she is excited and doesn’t realize what she is doing.

There are countless number of books and websites devoted to interpreting body language.  After reading all of them, I’d still be an idiot about how to do it?  The fundamental factor involved here goes to the heart of a lot of dating issues:  fear of rejection.  The fear that the woman crawling over the table giving me that sexy look isn’t interested in me and if I make a move she’ll reject me will always be present.  Even if I am married to her.

As the study seemed to indicate, we have two options as men: assume every friendly woman wants us, or assume they don’t.  The option that seems safer to us indicates a lot about our personalities.

The New York Times has an article, You Use It Every Day. But Can you Make It Cook, in which Mark Bittman shares his revelations regarding the ability to cook in a microwave.

I own a superior microwave oven due to the generosity of a friend, but all it ever gets used for is heating up frozen vegetables and leftovers.  Sometimes it may get the glamorous task of heating up water.  Once in a great while it may be turned on to actually defrost something.  There are buttons on the front of it which I don’t even know what they do and my efforts to cook on a setting other than HIGH don’t tend to be all that fruitful.

Bittman’s conclusions are well stated in the article and I for one am going to revisit this device on my counter and see how much more I can do with it.  I’m keen to try out the eggplant recipe he recommends in his article.

As a single man in the city, I sometimes struggle with the concept of eating well.  Sometimes eating well to me is not eating the entire bag of tortilla chips.  I was discussing the process of making dinner with a coworker and he talked about making chicken pot pie by opening the box and putting it in the oven.   This seemed fundamentally wrong to me, though I am just as guilty on relying upon frozen dinners for sustenance.  I decided to attempt to create a chicken pot pie.

The result was an unqualified success, and the process was so simple that I felt a compulsion to share.

Here is the basic recipe:

1/2 chicken breast (roughly 1/4 pound of chicken)
1 cup frozen mixed vegetables
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 1/2 cup vegetable broth (I only buy vegetable broth in case I  have to cook for a vegetarian, chicken broth obviously would work as well)
2 tbsp of flour
1/4 cup of water
1 pie crust

Add the chicken, vegetables, and broth to a pot and bring it to a boil.  Mix the flour and water together to form a nice slurry and drizzle into the boiling broth.  Stir thoroughly and reduce the heat so it goes to a simmer.  Flour needs to cook for awhile to eliminate the cereal taste, but this is just the first cooking step.  The next step is to transfer the ‘filling’ into an oven-safe bowl and lay pie crust on top.  Pop the bowl on a cookie sheet and place in a 400 degree oven for roughly fifteen minutes or until the crust is all browned.  I pulled mine out just a bit too soon and missed out on having a nice golden crust.  If I would have brushed it with butter, I could have gotten that delicious golden look.  I was content with this result, though.

Now you might notice that this isn’t a true ‘pie’ since there is no bottom crust.  Nothing is stopping you from laying down a bottom crust in the bowl, baking that while cooking the filling and then finishing it off as I described above.  I just happen to dislike the sogginess of the bottom of pot pies so avoid it completely.

For the pie crust I used the stuff you can find in the refrigerated section of your grocery store, usually near the biscuits in a tube.  Its cheap, you get two in a box, and it serves the purpose without having to take the pains of actually making pie crust.  Or, if you like your crust more flaky, track down some puff pastry to place on top of the filling or some of those biscuits in a tube might serve as a tasty topper to this meal.

Some words of caution… the gravy is HOT when it comes out of the oven.  I had to let this cool for a good five minutes before I could attempt to eat it.