Billowing Smoke and an Attempt at Organization

Yesterday, I was out running errands when Nathan called while he was waiting for a bus, the first time to talk to him since we left last weekend!  He's doing great, although we had a terrible connection, and he kept fading out.  While we were talking, Luke texted with the alarming news that our faithful vacuum had literally gone up in a puff of smoke!  Apparently, as Micah and Drew were vacuuming their room, they ran over the cord, which is not a first-time occurance, unfortunately.  But this time, the vacuum started billowing out a huge cloud of thick noxious black smoke, and after further examination, it appears the vacuum's soul has gone to the big appliance store in the sky.  Everyone had to evacuate the house and open all the doors and windows to get the smoke and fumes out!

This poor vacuum has served long and faithfully, for sure.  It's a Panasonic that we bought from Montgomery Ward in Colorado Springs, before we even had Nathan!  It got the best review in Consumer Reports that year (1996, I believe), and I think it lived up to the hype.  It has gotten louder over the years, but it has still vacuumed up everything we needed it too, and it didn't cost an arm and a leg either.  We really need a vacuum on each floor, so last night Bob looked on amazon, and we ordered a "Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional Upright" based on reviews.  We'll see if we're as happy with this one in 19 years . . . We're going to use the Shark on the main floor and move the Hoover we bought several years ago up to the second floor.

After the airing-out excitement, Bob took Caleb off to the airport for his first CAP orientation ride.  Ah, the cycle starts again.  While they were gone, we got to skype with Nathan!  Anna had said earlier this week, "Now it really seems real that Nathan is gone, and I miss him", so it was good for the kids to see him.  Luke took Nathan on a video tour of the room that formerly half-belonged to Nathan but now is all Luke's.  Luke has been an organizational inspiration in there, and the room and bathroom look amazing!  It is so much easier to just keep your own stuff organized, for sure.  

All this organization upstairs prompted Bob and me to try something different with shoes.  We had a bench that opened up to store shoes in, plus a big shoe rack with 4 shelves, but it was all so ugly, and shoes were always all over the floor all around the bench and shelves.  So we picked up another one of these O'nin room divider things from Costco--they are so big and study, and the bins are much bigger than the cubbie things sold in places like Target.  Now we have 3 of them, lol.  Anyhow, we put Nathan's shoes, and any other shoes that were too big/too small/not worn down in the basement, and then we divided up the cubbies.  Bob, Luke, and I each get our own cubby, and Caleb and Jonathan share one, only because they have very few pairs of shoes.  Pretty soon their shoes will be too big to fit in one cubby though, so we'll see how it works out then.  Anna and Grace get their own cubbies on the bottom row (because they both have TONS of shoes, and Anna especially is a really shoe-lover), and Faith shares with Verity.  Then Micah and Drew share the last cubby.  So we were pretty happy with that, plus I spent a lot of time cleaning out the study, filing papers and throwing others away, and Bob really cleaned up the kitchen.  We went to bed feeling fairly organized and clean, especially in the shoe area!

Which made it all the more ironic when we were ready to leave for church, and we realized that Micah had no shoes in his cubby.  None!  How did no one realize that last night?!  We frantically searched all 3 floors, plus outside, but eventually Bob and Luke headed off to church because Luke was scheduled to be in the nursery.  We kept on looking, and FINALLY I found his crocs outside behind the stairs of the trampoline, between the stairs and the netting.  Of course!  And as I was heading back inside, it dawned on me that I brought Micah's and Drew's tennis shoes to Tech last weekend, and they were probably still at the bottom of the tote bag where I threw them as we were packing up (they were indeed).  We were, however, very, very, very late to church, and we had to park really far away.  Sigh.  

So after my fleeting feelings of organization last night, I spent the morning feeling so frustrated.  There are still too many people actively working against my organizational attempts!  Maybe a new vacuum will help.