A decade or two ago, Woodlet was a happening color. A decade or two ago we were unwittingly happening too, which is how we happened to end up with external doors in that popular shade. Now, that hue is part of the Millennial Collection and must be special ordered. Yet, it was still part of our house’s palette until earlier this year. Is that what led us to finally recoat our doors? Ah, no. It wasn’t dated tones that set us about this task but flaking paint and rusting metal. We did seriously consider repainting in the same out-of-style color, a color we never liked in the first place. However, at some point, we correctly concluded that was a dumb idea. So, here’s how our doors went from brunet to blue and the wisdom we have gained from our brushing experience.

Online DIY websites and the experts at the home improvement store assured us that repainting a door is a fun day project, and our front door would be finished and reattached by evening. Hmmm…. I feel it my duty to bring some reality to the internet. This was no day project, and I’m not sure “fun” applied either. Although we did paint two doors instead of just one, most of the delays were from layers of paint drying. Therefore, adding on an extra door didn’t contribute much to our extended timeline, and my complaints remain legitimate.

After some internet and store searches, Newport Gray from Valspar, a hue which contrasts our stucco, ended up our selected color. I’m sure it will be unfashionable in another 10 years and probably still on our doors. We had two nephews helping us for the first seven-hour stint of this job thinking we would be able to complete it, but we didn’t even come close. Why did it take so much longer? Online authorities said only one coat of paint would be necessary after the primer. Wrong. White primer under blue paint meant two coats were required. It only took an hour for the primer to dry but four hours for each coat of Newport Gray. On a related side note, doors take more time to paint than their size would suggest.

Since it took us a few days to complete this undertaking, the timing turned tricky. We couldn’t just leave our house doorless; one of us had to be home when the doors were off. Also, we had to plan appropriately so coats would be dry by bedtime, and our dwelling wouldn’t be holey overnight.

In the end, we spent 50 man-hours on this endeavor, not exactly a “day” job. However, despite the time involved, it wasn’t a complicated task. It might have taken forever and a day instead of just a day, but it would have been hard to mess up. So, if you are up for a long but easy chore, painting doors might be your thing. For the record, notwithstanding my pseudo-whining, we were happy with how our doors turned out and would do it all over again.

By the way, if you are still wanting to paint your doors after my gentle warning, make sure you pick days when the weather isn’t too scalding. Apparently, wet paint does not mingle well with temperatures above 90. We chose a day when temps were in the low 80s… and then spent two more such days.

We are all creatures of habit, whether those habits include leaving piles of dirty socks in odd places all over the house or hitting the snooze button 10 times before we actually get out of bed. Oftentimes our habits do nothing but annoy our spouses or make us as round as bowling balls but occasionally they can be of good use.

Jason and I are far from lazy but between working hard and working hard at having fun there aren’t enough hours in the day for everything we need to get done. Hence, it’s often proven difficult for us to keep up with our housework even when we have the best of intentions. We used to clean in massive clumps because we couldn’t find time to do so otherwise but a few months ago I decided to put an end to this manic straightening. I devised a plan to encourage housework to become as much a part of our regular routine as brushing our teeth or putting on a fresh pair of underwear each morning. (Jason often overlooks applying daily deodorant so I won’t use that as an example of an established habit.)

I instituted “cleaning night” and now Jason and I spend an evening every week attacking our house with dusters and mops from top to bottom. Cleaning night has proven quite effective. Our house stays pretty tidy these days and if it does grow unruly putting it back in order isn’t an insurmountable task. I’ll admit that all the summer yard work and vacations have made it considerably harder to keep the cleaning constant but we’ve managed to stay on top of it reasonably well because I’m too obstinate to give up on any of my cockeyed ideas.

Now that our house doesn’t suffer from dust neglect I’m preparing to implement phase II of my habitual ploy. You know all those deep cleaning projects that you never ever have time for: the cupboards, the pantry, vacuuming under the bed, etc? Well, I have schemed up a way to get them all completed regularly. I have compiled a list of all these never-dones and Jason and I are going to take one of them on every week until they’re finished, at which point we’ll begin cycling through the list once again. These deep projects will be tackled in addition to our regular cleaning night. Yes, our lives are going to be even more packed, which doesn’t seem possible, but at least our cupboards will be tidy. Sadly, time is always a casualty in the war for neatness.

Between yard work and house work and regular work, life doesn’t give one much of a break. Jason and I sometimes lose whole weeks without anything to show for it except sparkly bathtubs and a happy yard. This seems to be an all too common complaint among the chronically busy. Regardless, I think cleaning night is a keeper. I would recommend a straightening ritual to anyone. Why should date night have the monopoly on breaking a sweat?

This post is all about bragging. That’s right, I’m writing this just so I can sing my own praises. And, since I am longwinded, my boasting is sure to be lengthy.

Last spring Jason and I planted a garden. We have just one 8×4 garden box in our yard but it’s big enough to provide more fresh deliciousness than two people could possibly consume: squash, cucumbers, onions, peppers, and, of course, tomatoes. Although all of our garden plants did well this year, our tomato vines were extraordinarily productive. From two tomato plants we harvest at least 429 tomatoes over the course of the summer. I tried to diligently keep track of how many we pulled off expressly for the purpose of rubbing it in everyone’s faces but I forgot to count my bounty now and then so 429 is a low estimate. And don’t you be thinking that that quantity was only possible because our pickings were pathetically small; no way, these were big juicy babies. Yum!

So what’s our secret? Did we spray our tomatoes nightly with mutant growth hormone? Make sacrifices to the great tomato gods? No and no. Though maybe we should have tried one of those proactive approaches so we could take credit for our tomatoes being awesome because, honestly, they pretty much did it on their own. We filled our entire garden box with a special soil blend from Olson’s Nursery specifically formulated to make garden box plants happy. It was well worth the $100 or so it cost us. We also, purposefully, built our garden box in the perfect sunny spot on the south side of our house. And that is pretty much the extent of our gardening labors. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Sunshine + nutritious soil = more tomatoes than we know what to do with.

So what has become of those nearly 500 tomatoes? Salsa, salsa, salsa, salsa, some pasta sauce, salsa, salsa, salsa. And, now that the weather has gotten cooler, tomato soup has become our new favorite way to use up lots of tomatoes. (I would highly recommend Tyler Florence’s recipe.)

That brings me to the sad part of this post; the part where I whine instead of brag. It is now time to pull up those hardy tomato plants that have provided their fruits so faithfully for months. Goodbye good fellows and thanks for all the fish…I mean veggies. I will morn your loss forever, or for about 7 months, whichever comes first. After said time I reserve the right to forget all about you and pursue my latest vegetable fling; I’m so fickle.