This is Santiniketan, a sleepy college town a few hours outside Kolkata, where we will most likely be living in 3-5 years.

Okay, well…maybe not. But back when Jarrod left India three years ago, he had no idea when or how he would be coming back. But then he applied for a Fulbright scholarship and got it. So there he was again, in India. And the same thing happened when he left India this time–he knew he wanted to go back, but when and under what circumstances, there was no way to tell.

And then last night he heard about the Olmsted scholarship. It’s a scholarship for military officers to study for two years in a foreign university–but before that even begins, they (and their spouses!) are provided eight months of language training. Which would mean three years in India, if we were to study at AIIS again.

So, that’s cool. I mean, three years in India. That’s tough to wrap my head around! But of course, it’s only just speculation at this point. Jarrod needs to finish pilot training before this even becomes an option, so it’s a very long way out. But exciting, anyhow.

Moving on though, I thought I’d show you some pictures of our house, now that things have been more or less placed.

This is our library and, might I add, almost completely IKEA–everything but the rug! (And the books. Do I need to explain that?)

This is our kitchen. I was thrilled when I saw how huge it was! Really. I don’t know what to do with some of the cupboards.

This is our dining room. It looks a little sad now, but I’m sure that if it were dressed up with two more chairs (which need only be assembled!), a side table (dream on, Emily) and new curtains things would start looking decent and less lonely/sad.

This is our living room, another fully IKEA room. We fleshed this bad boy out sitting in our local Cafe Coffee Day one Saturday (when we were still in India). It’s inspired by one of the rooms in The Nest Home Design Handbook. Also, take special note of the bookshelf. Thanks to some handiwork on the part of Hubs, the middle shelf has been lowered. Which, for those of you skeptics out there, is a big task, as all of the shelves are movable but the middle, which is attached fast to the sides.

It all looks pretty nice, huh? Oh no, do not envy so fast, dear reader. I still have two Major Disaster Zones that I have yet to fully face.

There they are: my sewing/craft/guest room, and Jarrod’s room. (Not his bedroom, silly! His room, meaning that he can use it for whatever he wants, because I sure can’t think of a use for it.)

I, for one, am terrified of this mess. How do I even begin sorting it? Whereas in the other rooms things fit nicely into shelves, closets, cabinets, and cupboards, each of these rooms only has one closet for use as storage, which means that the rest has to go…somewhere.

But now I’m Getting My Act Together.

Sometime within the last eight years Jarrod’s mom gave (loaned? oops…) me this book, along with their first book, Sidetracked Home Executives. Now, these books are old. So old that, on the back cover of this updated edition, one of them is wearing stirrup pants. But if you can get past the cringeworthy poems in each chapter and the fact that half of the book is mostly dialogue about their own lives, it’s actually a really handy tool. And to be honest with you, it is a fast and entertaining read.

Their main thing is the Notecard System.

That’s my box, again, courtesy of Jarrod’s mom several years ago. What they have you do is write your tasks on notecards and, once finished, move them as necessary to the next time they need to be done. It’s as simple as that! So I thought I’d give it a fresh try, now that I’ve finally got my own entire house to take care of.

Their other thing is getting rid of unnecessary clutter. Which is where they can help me, I think. It’s really not a difficult thing to do. They have you set a timer and go through as much as possible in an hour, making quick decisions about whether to (a) give it away (b) put it away (c) store it or (d) throw it away. They make sure you have everything right next to you, like a piggy bank and a box to put loose pictures in, so that you don’t get up to get something and end up not finishing the hour in the room. It’s good. Simple, but good, and I think it could work.

They also have helpful tips for what to do with things like excess pens, instruction manuals, twist ties, coupons, and other miscellany that one might be tempted to hang onto. I’ve come to the hard decision that it might just be time to slim my craft closet! Anyhow, I can reward myself with a pattern and some fabric when I’ve shoveled out my room, right? Right.

There is one beef I have with the book; that is, the outdated diet advice they give. This was in the low-fat era, so they endorse the consumption of diet drinks and skim milk. I don’t touch that junk! There’s also some sort of pain/pleasure system you’re supposed to think of…well anyway, I’ll just choose to ignore that chapter and move on.

On the whole it’s a pretty decent book that will hopefully help me whip those rooms into shape before the in-laws come to visit in November. Yikes! That’s soon!

My mother once purchased the book you see above, Home Comforts: The Art & Science of Keeping House by one Cheryl Mendelson. I, being the hooligan I was at eighteen, filched the book with the intention of reading it…sometime.

I really did try, but unfortunately I didn’t manage to get beyond the first few chapters. Maybe I was turned off by her rigid rules for dishwashing, implying that if I was anything less than scrupulous, I and everyone I loved would die a horrible death of food poisoning. So it sat nicely on my shelf, unread, until I packed it in a cardboard box in Jarrod’s parents’ basement, where it is currently awaiting transport to Mississippi.

“Then what’s it doing there on that ugly stone shelf,” you ask? Well, here’s the deal. About halfway through my time here, I got a hankering to pick it up again. Only they don’t have libraries in India, and in any case, it’s not even available for purchase in any bookstore here. I didn’t want to make Jarrod’s mom dig through all the boxes and boxes of things at home in search for this one book, and besides–I felt a touch guilty for having taken it from my parents’ house without returning it. All of those factors combined to justify a purchase, which was then brought to me when Jarrod’s parents visited last month. I’ll return my mom’s copy as soon as I get back.

Anyway, now I really am working my way through the book. I was chugging along at a really nice pace for a while, but right now it’s slow going: I’m bogged down in the chapters on cleaning floors. This book though–let me tell you what, it’s something else! If you’ve ever wondered how to do anything even remotely related to housekeeping, it’s in here. This lady is thorough, and not only that, but it’s not even dry reading! (Well, once you hit the floors it gets a little iffy.)

The book is over 800 pages, after all. It’s got to contain everything. But wait, there’s more. The author is a lawyer by day, so she’s even got information about laws regarding care labels, expiration dates, hiring housekeepers, intruders, etc.

I’m failing miserably at doing this book justice, but I just had to gush. Read it. She includes instructions geared toward beginners, like how to do dishes and vacuum properly, but she also includes instructions geared toward the housekeeping experts, like how to wax furniture.

Anyway, I have to go clean the bathroom now, fun fun yay. I don’t want to be a hypocrite, after all. I’ll blast some Regina Spektor and have a good time moppin’ and scrubbin’.