Organizing, Finances, Kids, & Changes, Oh My!

When I started this blog, I did it to encourage myself to get my house and life in order. I love to organize, so I thought this would be fun. Well, while I've been enjoying writing and feeling like I have a daily "job", I'm just not really happy with the direction in which I have started taking this blog. I'm no professional organizer, just a wanna-be, so I really want to back away from the path I was starting to go down - a bossy one! =)

In addition to enjoying organizing, I really enjoy saving money and seeing how far I can stretch a buck. My husband and I currently don't carry any debt other than our mortgage. (We've both been very lucky and very strategic with our money.) At a couple of points, though, we've leaned on our main credit cards. This may sound silly, but I really got a kick out of figuring out how we'd go about paying off the credit card and how quickly we could do it. Now, we were never in debt by much, but I enjoyed the challenge that debt offered.

One other topic I like to talk about and makes me happy is my family. I love to share stories about my kids in addition to hearing stories about others' kids. Our two very different dogs provide a bit of humor from time to time as well.

I guess what I'm saying is that I may take this blog in a whole other direction than I had initially planned. I think I might try to figure out how to mix these three interests of mine. I know, good luck, huh? Unfortunately, this blog itself likely won't be very "well organized" for a while. Hopefully it'll be more enjoyable to read with changing things up and me writing more in the same style that I talk.

What do you think? Anyone out there? =)

Evaluating the week of January 10

How are things going at your house? I was doing quite well at keeping everything organized until yesterday.

I don't know exactly what happened other than it was just "one of those days". Yesterday I didn't get right on the mail and it's already starting to get backed up. I'm getting the mail in order again today. Ditto with our videos and refrigerator - already. I need to show my sweet dear hubby how I had the fridge organized so we can both work to keep it in order. The videos are my fault. Although it only takes two more seconds to put the videos away, for some reason I felt the need to just set them next to the video drawer. Um, hello? I know, I know... Can you tell I'm still working on being more efficient by doing things the right way the first time? It'll take time for all of this to become habit.

How are your new organizing habits holding up? We're not that far along, so if things are falling apart, it won't take long to catch back up. You can do it!

Plan for the upcoming week: keep working at organizing the kitchen, talk about being efficient with our time, receipts in regards to rebates, medical bills, and taxes, and de-cluttering our purse / diaper bag / wallet

Evaluating the week...

Phew, we made it through our first week. That was relatively painless! How are your videos and magazines looking? How about your mail clutter? Are you managing it well?

I am happy to report that our videos are still looking good. Fortunately the video "drawers" are easy enough for the kids to use which helps keep the mess down. The only one in our family sad to see the magazine pile go was our one year old. He misses making a mess with those! =)

The mail clutter has taken a bit of effort on my part to maintain, but so far so good! It helps that the amount of mail we've received this week was pretty light. I can't even begin to tell you how much more relaxing it is to go into the kitchen without that mound of mail waiting for me.

What has worked for you this last week? Do you have additional ideas or suggestions? Please share!

Next week's goals: start tackling the kitchen (including that overflowing junk drawer), get that dreaded cleaning on a schedule, and get our receipts in order

Are you ready? I am! Together we can do it!

Topic Schedule

Since this is a blog about getting organized, I suppose it would be a good idea to make a schedule of sorts to help me keep on task. I don't know about you, but I get pretty overwhelmed when I don't have a plan for accomplishing something - especially something as big as a blog!

Schedules and lists are so important to me. They are about the only things that help me remember to get certain things done and help me stay on task. Lists and schedules are important, though I think it's also important to remember that they need to be flexible. While I try to cross everything off my list by the end of the day, sometimes life gets in the way. That's okay. Also, sometimes a schedule I've worked out for myself just isn't working. That's when the flexibility comes in handy - being flexible enough to change the schedule around to try to find one that will work better.

To start, I'll try to stick with the following organization topic schedule:

Sunday - time

Monday - house

Tuesday - finances

Wednesday - house

Thursday - decluttering / eliminating / simplifying

Friday - house

Saturday - evaluating the past week and planning for the week ahead

What are your thoughts? Is there an area you would be interested in covering? Let me know!