Simply Thankful Week 1

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of November is pumpkin pie with whipped cream! The second is thankfulness (that should probably be first but really like pumpkin pie). Practicing gratitude is something I need to work on. It’s easy for me to remember to be thankful for my family, home and health but there are also many small everyday reasons to be thankful. Some days it may be harder to find reasons to be grateful for but I keep looking and I find them!

affection appreciation decoration design — Photo by Carl Attard on Pexels.com

The simple things I’m grateful for this week are…

Unlimited calling/data plans
Coffee
Gathering with friends
Not setting the alarm
Homemade soup on a rainy night
Pumpkin spice coffee creamer
Puppy snuggles

What are you thankful for this week? Let me know in the comments.

October Simplicity Wrap up

I decided to finish this month’s decluttering project strong and early by tackling the boxes of craft supplies from the storage room. Just having craft stuff in the storage room and not in the craft corner was the first clue I might have too many supplies.

I started with the sewing, quilting, and general purpose craft supplies. I put like items together and got rid of some things. That emptied a bulky rolling cart. When I finish cleaning and sorting the craft corner, I’ll permanently move those items into the craft area to create space in the storage room.

Then I turned my focus to the paper craft supplies. I’ll have to sort the paper, stickers and rubber stamps again. But now I have those items better organized back on the shelves, that makes them easier to find and use.

This month I filled one and a half of our 64 quart give away boxes, a 13 gallon trash bag and a paper grocery bag for recycle. The stack of empty containers is the biggest part of the decluttering for this month. I’m not going to get rid of them until I’m further along in the process. I don’t want to re-purchase plastic shoe boxes because I gave all of our containers away. I am also getting better at realistically answering the questions “Do I love this item? Am I really going to use it?”

November’s project is to sort out the Christmas decoration before I’m ready to display them. This project is going to be hard.

Still Not a Morning Person

I’ve never been one to rise and shine, it’s more like thud and grumble. I read the blog post on how to be more productive, I’d love to get more crossed off my to do list. One thing they have in common is the need for a good morning routine, including getting up an hour (or more) earlier. I already get up at oh-dark-thirty to get to work on time (or close to it). If I get up much earlier I’ll be getting up when my teenager goes to bed.

photo of person holding alarm clock — Photo by Acharaporn Kamornboonyarush on Pexels.com

Somethings I could do in that extra hour are read, meditate or exercise. We tried to exercise in the morning before work. It didn’t last long, I’m not very pleasant before sunrise. If I try to read before coffee I wouldn’t get to the end of the first page without nodding off.

For those of us who aren’t morning people our morning routine might look like this….

Hit snooze alarm
Hit snooze alarm again
Drag sleep deprived body out of bed
Trip over the dog
Turn on the coffee pot
Let the dog out
Nod off waiting for coffee
Drink coffee
Grunt at family
Let the dog in
Drink more coffee
Dress for the day – double-check that shoes match each other

The best morning routine is the one that works for you. There is no one way to be productive or to get more day. Do what works for you and enjoy your accomplishments, big or small, what ever time of the day you do them.

November Simplicity Project

I’m very sentimental about Christmas! The decorations, the treats, the music and the movies! Sigh. Even as much as I love Christmas everything the decorations we don’t love and put on display are still clutter. Some of our decorations haven’t been put on display in this house, that’s 12 Christmases! Twelve years is a long time to be packed away and not loved or used.

My November simplicity project is to sort the Christmas decorations. Doing this before I want to put the decorations on display will give me time to sort them and not feel rushed. Or waiting until after the holidays to sort them when all I want to do is get all of it put away. This project has been on my “maybe someday” for a while, a long while. This year is the “someday” to get it done.

I can use all the filters and vignettes available to make it look good but t it’s still 15 boxes (plus some things that fit in the boxes) of Christmas stuff. I don’t think this will be a one item a day project, it will have to be one box at a time.

Simple Joys #6

Friday Night Lights Edition

Last night was the last regular season football game. That also makes it the last regular season performance for the marching band. Our oldest was in high school marching band for four years and our younger one’s second year of marching band is coming to a close. I love to see my kids on the field and see how much the show improves over the season. My heart may be warmed after watching my kids on the field but my body isn’t so warm sitting on the metal bleachers. To avoid a frozen band mom my daughter gave me a rechargeable hand warmer.

Post game is back home with my blanket and some hot chocolate to warm up.

Simplicity the October Edition

It’s the middle of October and the decluttering is still in progress. Slow progress but moving forward.

mother-messy-room-vector-illustration-young-overhelmed-mom-trying-to-get-together-things-living-35621641 This month my plan was to downsize my clothes and craft items. I don’t have a lot of clothes so getting rid of items was a bigger challenge than I thought it would be. I had to look realistically at what I wear (t-shirts and jeans) and how many of those items I need. Do I really need 20 solid colored t-shirts? Or 10 pairs of flannel lounge pants? Well…okay, no I don’t. I downsized the lounge pants to just enough to make it from one laundry day to the next for each season. I’m still working on the t-shirts.

The craft items created just the opposite problem. I may have a pretty good stash (not that I’m admitting to anything) of different types of craft items. Sewing, card making and scrapbooking are my favorites. I have a little of this, a little of that and a little more of that. Picking out one or two items a day to get rid of is more difficult than sorting clothes or some of the items from last month because many of the items are so small. Getting rid of one button or one sticker isn’t going to make much difference so I feel like I need to downsize those items by groups rather than one item at a time. That may become a project all by its self but until then I’ll keep at it one rubber stamp at a time.

The thing I noticed Monday while I was packing my lunch for work was the number of lunch containers I have. I work full-time hours in a four-day work week, I really only need four of each type of container to prep my lunches. I may have a few extras of those even if we have left-overs and I freeze lunches for later. This month’s question is how many of any item do I really need? Ouch! Guess I don’t need three lunch bags either.

Getting closer to the little house one item at a time!

Someday

selective focus photography of hour glass — Photo by samer daboul on Pexels.com

Someday I’ll have a clean kitchen table

Someday I won’t have backpacks on the floor

Someday we won’t have to run carpool

Someday there won’t be band, choir and theater

Someday will be here all too quickly. This is a stage and as my mom used to say…”this is just a stage. Be careful what you wish for, the next stage could be worse.” She was talking about nighttime feedings, teething, terrible twos and teens but that advice is just as applicable today.

This stage consists of spending most of our time in the car, dropping off, picking up, attending events, going to the store for frozen pizza and more milk…again, nagging about clothes left on the bathroom floor, and more dishes in the sink.

Today I’ll breath, put stray shoes in the basket…again and get an extra gallon of milk. The next stage is an empty nest. I already have an idea of what that will be because our daughter and son-in-law are 900 miles away. I am very proud of the people they have become and the life they are creating together but I also miss them terribly.

Hey someday, if you could slow down just a little bit, stay away just a day longer so I can get the pizza and listen to another story about a video game I don’t understand, then I’ll do the dishes and clean the house, well, someday.

The Perfect Planner

I’ve kept a calendar/planner in one form or another for many years – since before it was the in thing – from Franklin Covey, Day Timer, to Bullet Journals and back. Planners in all their forms are very popular and digital planners have come a long way since my Palm Pilot. I’ll admit it, though, I’m a paper planner girl. However, I couldn’t get into the Bullet Journal, or BuJo, craze. The Bullet Journal is a planning system that you can personalize using a blank notebook to track a verity of activities and goals. There might be a million blogs and YouTube videos about them on the internet, if you want more information you can go here, here or here.

The bullet journal can be a great system if it works for you. It didn’t work for me. I tried really hard, maybe too hard. I’m not artistic and my handwriting is awful. I’d print my monthly calendars, use rubber stamps to make page numbers and headings and carefully make my master monthly to do list. I am also my biggest critic. I’d look at Pinterest (bad idea) and my pages failed in comparison. For the most part, the journal was functional but I spent more time trying to set it up and make it pretty than the time it saved me. I still felt like things were falling through the cracks.

I never did get the hang of the master monthly to do list. When I turn the page the list disappears, out of sight out of mind. If I assign a task to a specific day, there is a better chance the it will get done. Maybe not on that day but usually that week.

The system that works for me is a monthly/weekly view calendar in the 8×5 inch size, it’s portable and pretty because it’s printed already. I also prefer one with a full Saturday and Sunday layout. There is extra room to put things I want to get done that week but haven’t assigned it to a day. I put upcoming items on the appropriate week. For example, I know I need to mail a birthday card the second week in November so I’ll put that in the extra space on that week then put it on the specific day as it gets closer.

I also keep a brief overview of our month in my planner. Our family has a shared digital calendar with appointments, practice, and anything else everyone might need to know about. All of us can add to it and update times.

There are many wonderful planner styles, sizes and brands. No planner is going to be perfect for everyone, the perfect planner is as individual as the person using it. The perfect planner is the one that helps you be productive and organized.

Simple Joys #5

Happy Fall!

Whether you love candy corn or not, it makes a cute fall decoration!

September Simplicity Wrap-Up

We did it! We made it to the end of our first month of decluttering! We’ve committed to another month. Honey is going to focus on the garage and I’m going to do clothes and craft items (gulp!). He won this month’s battle of the boxes. It’s really a win for both of us because it gets us 2 plus boxes closer to our (eventual) goal of downsizing.

Day 18 was hard! I was having a hard time finding one thing to put in the box without digging into the boxes in the storage room. I’m not ready to tackle that yet. I recycled some old sewing patterns and then got to thinking about what else I could sort. I still had 12 more days!

At about the half way point I went shopping all by myself. I was on a mission, without my helpers, for work shoes and a hair product I can’t get at the stuff mart. I got to look around my favorite hobby & home decor store. There were so many things that were A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E! I’d think, “that is so cute, I could find some where to put it”. Nevermind that I don’t need it and it doesn’t coordinate with anything else we have. Then I pictured the box slowly filling with items I don’t use, the adorable stayed at the store *sigh*. I came home with the shoes, hair product and a pink notebook for my planner.

My other Ah-Ha moment was when I realized I’m a pack rat. I can pack stuff out of sight like a pro. If it’s in an enclosed bookshelf or a drawer it’s not clutter. Right? No! I had a drawer full of broken, tarnished costume jewelry, key chains and buttons for clothes I don’t own. Wow! I also found once I started looking at groups of items like books, costume jewelry and DVDs that it was easier to sort the entire group.

These are most of the items in my 64 quart storage box, the yard ornaments are in the garage (they weren’t coming in the house), a couple pairs of shorts that were in Honey’s box from before the pre-separate box stage and a tablet. I sold that! That is a lot of extra stuff.

It has made me think a little more about what I buy. Is it something I need? Will I really use it more than a couple of times? Do I really want to spend money on it? Those are the questions I find myself asking. I actually left the bullseye store without spending money. I didn’t know that was even possible!

That is the 3 foot pile of stuff that is leaving and not coming back! On to the October decluttering!