This is me endorsing Another GREAT product for absolutely No Money Whatsoever...

I am a lazy wife. It’s true. Sometimes, I feel bad for my husband. Other times, I remember that it is 2012 and if he wanted his socks folded, instead of thrown haphazardly in a drawer, he would do it himself. When we first got the house I was the-best-little-wifey-in-the-world, laundry was always clean folded and put away, I changed the bed sheets once a week, dishes were done nightly and things were dusted; but I was also working only part time and I wasn’t even engaged yet. I had so much more motivation before I knew he was stuck with me for the long hall.

Now that I’m working and I have picked up a few more hobbies, and a husband, I’ve let the house slide a little. I’ve tried everything to keep up: assigning a day for cleaning, making a chart of a few things we could do every day, but living just keeps getting in the way. Usually, I leave things until I go batshit crazy, we have guest coming over or we run out of clean underwear; whichever comes first.

For the record, let me just say that my house doesn’t look like an episode from Hoarders or anything but as we speak, I still need to do laundry from our trip this past weekend, there are dishing in the sink, and the living room could use a dusting and a vacuuming.  But you know what is clean? All my hard surface floors. And do you want to know why they’re clean? It certainly is not because I excel at mopping.  I have found yet another little gem that makes my life just a little easier.

It’s called a Mint. I found it on Facebook, in one of those ads on the right hand side the no one really pays attention to (except me apparently.) This little guy is awesome. He can sweep and mop any hard surface floor automatically! All you have to do is attach the reusable cloth, set it on the floor and turn it on.

Sounds too good to be true right? Well it isn’t. I have 4 cats and a dog that are all shedding like crazy right now, and the mint sweeps up all the hair better than I ever did with a broom. I used the mopping feature for the first time last week, because Tay got mud prints everywhere. I set it up and was a bit skeptical, but when I came back half an hour later the mud prints were gone! I wanted to kiss it. After that I knew I had to blog about it so that anyone else who was struggling could get one too.

Here is a video of the Mint in action:

Even Oliver the cat loves the Mint

The Mint is pricey, around $200 but sweeping and mopping were the most difficult chores for me and although Tom did help when I asked him to it didn’t get done as often as I wanted it to, so for me it was worth every penny.

A word of caution though, don’t expect to get much else done while the mint is running. It’s just too fun to watch.

Disability: An Ingenious Way to Live

My favorite quote is from a man named Neil Marcus: “Disability is not a ‘brave struggle’ or ‘courage in the face of adversity.’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.” I first read it sometime during college when my poetry professor, after hearing some of my poetry related to disability, suggested I look at the work of some well-known poets with disabilities. That quote has been with me ever since.

After college, I even got a tattoo inspired by the quote and designed by my best friend:

It's a stylized handicap symbol with the word Ingenuity as the wheel. This was taken right after it was done. 

But even before I knew who Neil Marcus was, Ingenuity, process of applying new or inventive ideas to solve problems or meet challenges,  had been the key to living my life as independently as I could. All my life my other friends with disabilities would remark about how I was able to do things that they couldn’t do. It wasn’t that my disability was any less than theirs or that I was any better at being disabled. It was just that I knew that there was always a way, you just had to be willing to find out what that way was.

I think my Dad was the first person to show me how ingenuity could change something from impossible to possible. I think I was maybe three or four when my twin and I got big wheels for Christmas. Of course I couldn’t ride it, but I liked to store things in the seat and push it around the yard like a crude walker. Sometimes, when she was feeling generous, my sister would push me around on it. Then one day, my Dad used screws to attach a pair of old sneakers to the peddles. It didn’t work exactly the way we thought it would, but it was the first of many designs that eventually got me riding an adult tricycle by middle school.

Since then, I have been using a little ingenuity to get through my daily life. A few weeks ago, I came across a situation while sewing that required a little bit of ingenuity. For me, the hardest part of making quilts is the cutting. I used to do all my cutting while standing at the kitchen table, but recent back and hip pain, mixed with a new, higher kitchen table made cutting this way difficult. My solution was to take my cutting mat upstairs to my sewing room and put it on the floor, then cut on my hands and knees, giving me better leverage on the cutter and more control over my ruler and the fabric. I quickly realized that that position was helping me cut easier, but it was also putting too much pressure on my hips, so after trying a chair, and then a foot stool I finally came up with this:

A sturdy laundry basket, flipped over and covered with a towel for cushion. Please ignore my mess!

It’s almost perfect. It allows me all the benefits of cutting from the floor without putting pressure on my hips. But it does cause a small kink in my neck if I am at it for too long.

How I use it. Please ignore my hair. I think my next blog will be called Bad Hair Days, in which I post the crazy things my hair does on a regular basis.

Here are the fruits of my labor: 200 8x8 inch squares. Which now have to be cut into triangles. Oy.

What are some of your most ingenious solutions?