So simple.

I recently bought this fan for our kitchen.  I am going to try hard this year (just like last year) to keep the thermostat set at a frugal 78 degrees throughout the summer.  That's pretty OK throughout the day, a little humid, but manageable. 

But then I start to cook dinner, and once the oven and stove are on, and the hot sun pours through the West-facing kitchen/dining room windows, it gets hot.  Hawt.  Fast. 

Today we've got a bit of a cool streak- it's only 65 degrees in the house with my windows open.  But, summer is near- and I told myself no matter what, I'll keep it at 78, and deal with it like every American housewife dealt with it before central air, and like a million women deal with it every day around the world. 

Unless people are coming over.  Then it's a cool 72.  Hear that?  You should come over more often. 

You see, this is dinner time we're talking about.  This is the witching hour.  Everything's on the verge of coming unglued (especially me) and I'm trying to create a big dinner, and my children are on the edge of crazy and I'm dying for Jim to walk in the door at 6:30...  It's a horrible time to be hot and sweaty, and that kitchen can easily get up to 87 or so degrees in no time, while I labor over a pot of something steamy.  And I'm trying to look at least a little put-together and cute for when Jim gets home- and trying to act as glued together as possible, since this is the only time he sees me doing my job with the kids all day, and if he judged my joy in mothering by how I feel at 6 PM alone?  Well, that's just sad. 

I digress.  It's an easy time to feel sorry for myself.

So, I needed a great fan.  That settles it.

Anyway- it's funny how it starts so simple.  I'll add one new thing to a room, then I have to make a space for it.  Then I need to clean around that space.  Then I keep cleaning, moving, re-arranging.  It's like I have this great new thing and the whole room needs to adjust to be worthy of it.  

So it started with moving things around on the counter.  Then cleaning under/behind them.  Soon I'd removed/cleaned everything on the counter tops...and over the next two days I  totally cleaned out and re-organized the cabinets, changed how I store produce, and created a "breakfast station" in one of our cupboards for our kids. 

I'm loving the productivity-juice that fan served up, but it's just funny.  One little fan was a catalyst to a ton of work I'd been putting off for months.  It all started so simple.

I'm going to go open all my cabinet doors just to look inside them now, then shut them again.  You do that after you organize too, right?  So rewarding.