Success upon success...

Today was a good day.  I shall start with the tasty part.  Priorities!

Yes, I made my first stir-fry!!  I adapted a recipe to make Beef with Sugar Snap Peas.  It was my first stir-fry.  My first use of sirloin.  My first use of cornstarch.  And my first use of sugar snap peas.  Thanks to Mary's coaching over the phone, quelling all my fears before I started, I had culinary victory with this recipe!

When I was temping in DC, there was this deli across from one of my longer assignments that had a sort of lo mein with sugar snap peas.  I do not eat peas or beans in any fashion, but I craved those sugar snap peas with my entire being and ate them every day for lunch. I had forgotten about them until I saw an ad on my Target Cartwheel app for them.  Using the app, I bought them on sale with the intention of replacing them for the broccoli in a beef-with-broccoli recipe.

Because I am a fan of ginger, I had to add in ginger.  I just had to!  I also switched the oyster sauce to Golden Mountain Sauce, as I do for any seafood sauce.

Mary taught me that it is important to use high heat when making stir-fry and to use a pan where the bottom is in full contact with the burner.  She also suggested that I try a sugar snap pea to decide if I wanted to snip off the ends (I did; I did).  I was so bouyed with confidence by the time I hung up the phone, I was certain that I would have culinary victory.

Tastiness sublime!

I froze just one serving, because I was not sure how the sugar snap peas would freeze.  I don't mind having leftovers twice over for the other two servings.  In fact, I could eat another one right away.  Amos would certainly like to do so because then he would get to lick another bowl!  Oh, how exited am I that I conquered this recipe!!

Earlier today, I had another success.  I found a place to donate my children's and young adult books where kids will be able to pick the ones they want and take them home!

All the books in front of the boxes and the two piles above them are from my last round of culling. I was so excited after I got off the phone knowing that kids will soon have these books that I went searching for more to add.

The place is a tutoring center for underprivileged and foster care youth.  A perfect place, in my opinion.  The icing on the cake is that the center is going to come fetch all the books, so I do not have to schlep them out to the car and on over to the center.  Yeah!!

Before the culinary victory and the donation success, I had closet success.  I managed to be more stern with myself in going through my clothes and filled to just overflowing a garbage bag of work clothing.  I acknowledge that I still have more clothing than I actually really and truly need, but I like what I have left.  Next time, perhaps I will gird my loins more severely and reduce my closet density further.

What is kind of odd is that I finally got around to using the stackable shelves I still have in abundance to better organize the clothing on the shelves of the  closets in my bedroom.

Just look at all that men's lounge pants and hoodies organization!  Of course, looking at the photo here, I realize that one might not easily see just how I organized my hoodies, but that's okay.  As it is, you cannot see the heaviest weight ones hanging on the hooks on the closet door.  Besides, I also forgot to hang all the hoodies with the hoods in the same direction.  I shall remedy that soon.

The other side is less impressive because after I got it all organized, I sewed up the hole in my purple pajama pants and then did not carefully put them back on the shelf as I thought.  I ran out of the long and narrow sized shelving, but I have some below that I am currently using for my shoes.  So, I will ... eventually, switch out the shoes shelves with the wider, shorter stacking shelves that I still have in abundance.  I don't have clothing for a third layer, as in the other closet's shelf, but having them there will help keep the clothes atop these shelves in place.

Sadly, you can see that the wooden bars I put in my closets are bending.  I put in the single shelfs, too.  So, why, then, did it take me another four years to actually finish the closet organization?

But this is about what I did accomplish, not what I failed to do:  I soothed my upsettedness with downsizing and organizing. I found a way to get my books into the hands of kids.  And I made tasty stir-fry on my very first attempt!

I still have to clean up the disaster in my kitchen (the making of stir-fry was messy) and to put the bag of clothes, the bag of blankets and towels, the adult books, and the two shadow box shelves with miniature display items that I will be dropping off Goodwill into my car.  Later.  After some resting.

One more reducing note:  Last night, I finally put my old Dyson vacuum cleaner out in the alley, with a note that it needed repair and where I had it serviced last.  It was gone in 10 minutes.  That cleared up space in the servants' quarter's closet for the cushion for the steamer lounger during poor weather.  I was surprised at how much heavier it is than the new one I got last year.  I think I was right in dreading trying to carry it downstairs.  I should have asked Firewood Man to do so one of the many times he's been here.

Anyway, here I am sitting here on the couch, avoiding dishes, counting up my successes, and waiting until lunch tomorrow when I can have another serving of my Beef with Sugar Snap Peas!