What I'm NOT Worried About

Here are the things that I'm not worried about at this point.  We are all human, and our time is limited.  There are only a certain number of things any one person can do in a given week, so something has to give.  Here are the things that I'm not worried about at this point.

1. Cooking from Scratch.  My family is hard enough to please when it comes to food.  I struggle each week simply getting a decent menu plan together.  Until I get better at planning food, I feel it gives me a bit of a break to use cooking helps.

2.  Doing my hair and makeup everyday.  I want to be able to do this, I really do, but I don't want to get up early enough to do this along with my devotional, my exercise, and my daily planning.  So, again, something has to give :).  Until I can discipline myself to get up earlier, a ponytail is just going to have to suffice for some days.

3.  Crafts.  I want to be crafty, I want to make things by hand, but the time is just not there.  I don't have a lot of knowledge in how to do things like this, so I'm learning a lot from the very beginnings and that is time consuming.  So, for now, these will be regulated to a small part of my week.

4.  Gardening.  It might sound like a strange one, but my family is big on gardening, so I really want to try to do this, but it's another thing that I don't have the time to put it it right now.

Those are all that I have come up with so far.  I'm sure I will come up with more as I go along, but this is good for now.  Mostly, my goal with this is to simply give myself permission to NOT do everything.  I'm not SuperMom or Wonder Woman, and I cannot accomplish it all.  And that's okay :).


If you're interested, here's the link to Money Saving Mom's blog on the same topic: here.

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.

OYOL Week 14 and Misc. Thoughts

 I've been working since the year began to declutter my home and get rid of the excess that's just sitting around and over all I think I've been doing pretty well.  I've noticed now that some places are getting cluttered because the organization within them is not working.  For example:

This cabinet isn't bad, but I can't get to the back and it's hard to get new stuff put away.

 So I end up with things here:

 And here.  Especially on grocery days.  I eventually get them put away, but only after a good 45 mins of resorting.

Another area is my couponing.  The files are currently so full they are busting and so I haven't put any more away leaving me with this:

 This:

 And this:

I'm hoping to get one or both taken care of tomorrow for my Week 14 OYOL (decluttering).  I'll let you know how it goes!