Focus Areas

I've broken down the things that are important to me (or important that I do) into 6 areas.  I have personal, marriage, mothering, home management, ministry (which for me includes my extended family), and fun.  I got these basically verbatim from Money Saving Mom, if you're interested in what she has said about them.  She also has a printable you can use if you're into that sort of thing :).

To break them down a bit more, here's what they entail:

Personal: spiritual disciplines, my relationship with God, exercise (I consider it not only vital to my health, but also my mood and outlook tend to be much better when I've gotten some exercise in)

Marriage: Don't expect to see too much posted on this as it is a bit private.  I do plan on restarting my goal of weekly at home dates.

Mothering:  Basically anything I can think of to help me be a better mother, anything from activities to Bible verses to help me through my day.

Home Management: Another self-explanitory category.  Will include cleaning, decorating, finances, anything to do with running my house.

Ministry:  I want this one to be ways that I can specifically get myself to find ways to minister to those around me each week.  Too often we are guilty of thinking about doing something and then never getting around to it.  Ideally, this will rid me of that excuse.

Fun: A way for me to still dabble in projects but hopefully get me to finish them at the same time.  I have some serious trouble when it comes to finishing what I start, so maybe that will keep me on track.

As I said, I'm still working on the goals within these categories.  I'll post them in a few days, but first up (hopefully tomorrow) I want to focus on things that are NOT on my list of things to do right now. This is another idea I got from the Money Saving Mom website, and I'll link the specific page in the post.  (Honestly, right now I need to be getting to bed, so goodnight!)

Kid's Toys

I promised Brenda over at Unsolicited Advice, that I'd put up some pictures of my toy organizers.  This is one area that I've actually gone and spent the money needed to get things somewhat under control.  I still need to do a few things to get it totally workable (one of which would be to figure out how to get a 3 year old to help me clean up more...) but we're doing pretty well with it.  I did a bit of reorganizing as I was taking these pictures, it was needed and is going pretty well, so I like the set up right now.

We do have a "play room" it's our sunroom/porch, but I have it set up for the kids.  Yes, I was a preschool teacher so the urge to create "centers" runs deep in my blood :).  I didn't actually segment things off, but we do have a general flow to the area that I really like.

Play Room/Porch:

These storage shelves are some of my favorite things.  I LOVE them :), but they do hold a bit too much for my kids at this point.  When all the bins are dumped (which is about 4-5 days a week around here) Abigail gets too over loaded to help clean.  I went through yesterday and cleaned each drawer out about halfway to have fewer toys in general circulation.  Doesn't seem like they've noticed yet ;).  The majority of our toys live out here.

I also have this storage box in the living room:

 It's sort of my catch-all for things that don't fit into a nice category in the bins outside or in the kids' rooms.  We have video game items in a basket on the right, but the left is basically where I dump toys if I don't feel like (or don't have time) to sort them out to their proper areas.  Some of the bigger things do live around the outside.
And, just for perspective, here's how the area flows together.

In the kids' rooms, I don't really keep very many toys (at least, I don't think I do!).  My kids love to be around the action so only rarely do they even want to go play by themselves.  I used to keep more in their rooms, but they would only drag it out to the living room.

Abigail mostly has the toys that are too old for Nathan.  He would either tear them up or choke on them.

And Nathan gets the toys that are really too young for both kids.  :) I just put these in here, though, so he's quite curious and ready to undo my work.

And that's it!  I've tossed a lot of toys, we don't keep ANYTHING broken,  and I sell old stuff and doubles regularly at consignment sales.  We're still working on keeping it all put away (I cleaned for these pics, lol) but we at least have a place for everything even if not everything stays in it's place.  Also, I'm working on tags for the bins so anyone cleaning up will know where things go.  Hopefully that will be the last piece needed for this particular area.  :) It would be nice to have one actually done.

One Down, One to Go

I finished the coupon declutter...sort of.  It's all put away and contained at least, but I really need to take some time to go through and toss the expired ones.  Sigh, another day.  For now, I'm going to TRY to simply focus on the fact that at least the clutter is hidden away a bit.  And I have enough space to put new circulars away, so the clutter should stay away for at least a little bit.  I don't have a ton if extra space, though, so tossing old coupons may quickly become a priority.  Anyway, here are my after pics:

The yellow folder on the left is where I threw all my loose coupons.  Not ideal, but at least if little hands grab it now, they won't scatter all over the floor.  Eventually I'll find homes for the binders and other things that are just sitting there, but for now, this is better than in was!

Oh, and if you were wondering all those coupons went here:

I'm thinking about getting an accordion file to hold them that way I wouldn't be chained to the filing cabinet every Wednesday when I'm clipping for grocery shopping.  It might work, but it's also another thing to buy, and I don't have the money right now.  :) Eventually I'd like to have my home all spiffy and organized in cute ways, but until I can afford that I'm trying to just plain get it organized.  In whatever ugly/functional way I can.

New Nap Time Ideas

I've been doing the same thing day after day during naptime a la "The FlyLady".  Clean kitchen, declutter for 15, daily mission, flip laundry, 15 min computer time, one item from the WHB, etc. (I posted on that here.)  But it has all become kinda boring.  I never feel like I'm getting anywhere and that for me becomes a problem.  So I've decided to consolidate a bit and see if things will work better.  Here's the new plan (just for nap, the rest of my day is pretty much the same right now):

Sunday: Planning
Monday: Yard Work/Car clean out
Tuesday: Cleaning
Wednesday: Menu planning/Office items
Thursday: Free
Friday: Organizing + Mop Kitchen/Dining Room
Saturday: Usually with family, but if I'm home I'll probably add another cleaning or organizing day, whatever needs to be done most.

It's been kind of a rough first week, but I'm going to try this again next week to see how it works.  I like that I'm not doing the same thing everyday, but I did notice I got a bit more sidetracked this week.  Especially Wednesday.  Sitting at the computer for "office work" is never a good idea if you don't have a plan.  Which I didn't.

Weekly Schedule

I know I promised this for earlier in the week, but we've picked up another head cold around here, so my thought process has been pretty fuzzy. My routine following has been terrible as well, but I'm determined to not beat myself up about that. Hopefully tomorrow I can get back into the swing of things. If I can get the house a bit more under control tomorrow, then Monday it should be easier to dive back into my routine. We'll see...

Anyway, here's my weekly schedule, such as it is: (as always, this is my goal, not what usually ends up happening!)

Sunday- clean out the fridge (trash comes Monday), plan out my week (any lessons for Abigail, personal goals for the week)

Monday- dust, Kent's day off so generally we run errands or just spend time with Daddy

Tuesday- sweep and mop floors

Wednesday- wipe mirrors and then glass on the back doors, make menu for next week and grocery list

Thursday- change out sheets and towels, grocery shopping

Friday- vacuum rugs (our house is all tile, but we do have some area rugs that need to be done from time to time), possibly play date (try to schedule them for Fridays, but it depends on schedules)

Saturday- visit grandparents

Again, for the most part this follows FlyLady's weekly home blessing hour. I'd love to say that this is how all my weeks go, but in truth this is just an idea in my head. I don't think I've ever accomplished everything in one week, but I'm trying. If I make sure that I at least hit different things each week, then at least it will all get covered eventually, right? On the plus side, having done all this OYOL work, I'm at least beginning to get a better idea of WHY I feel like my life is crazy. I actually DO have a lot of work :) even if I am "just" a stay-at-home mom!

OYOL Week 8

Here's my daily routine. I use the FlyLady system for this (though I've put it together in a way that fits my life) so I've linked everything that goes along with her website. I have no set times on this because I just do it as I have time, but I do try to get each section done in it's part of the day. Not sure that really makes sense, but it should once you see the schedule.

AM:

Devotional

Shower & Dressed to Shoes

Eat a Good Breakfast

Clean up Kitchen (ideally in under 10 mins. I set a timer to try to get it done fast)

Brush Teeth, Hair, Makeup (if I don't do this together, I never come back to it)

Start a Load of Laundry

After Lunch:

Clean Kitchen

Put Laundry in dryer

One item from the Weekly Home Blessing List

Daily Mission

15 Min. Decluttering

Fold Laundry, Put Away

After Dinner:

Clean Kitchen

Shine Sink, Lay out new towels

Clean up Toys (with Abigail)

Exercise (I've been doing this earlier in the day, though, so I might need to move it. Also, this ideally would be an everyday thing...it's not)

PM:

Lay out clothes for tomorrow

Brush, Floss, Listerine

In bed (relaxing, not necessarily asleep) by 10

Since I'm already past my 10 o'clock time now I'll just post this and be done. I'll try to post my weekly routine (there's not much to it) tomorrow...hopefully :).