January Week 1

We are 11 days into the new year but really are just finishing up the first week. You can tell life has been slow if these are the kinds of gems I have been pondering. My semester starts again tomorrow. I have a course release so my only class is the clinical supervision course. I will have a lot of research and clinic meetings (as well as departmental) but I am looking forward to not having to grade. Speaking of grading, I need to finish the last assignment for the online class which wrapped up on Friday. This class was not a success. Hopefully the one in the summer will be better.

Yesterday, I made an attempt at toddler braids. They don't look terrible from the front.

Kind of a mess in the back, though. I need more practice.

We have had fun this week, primarily with me watching A "make grandma's birthday cake" (out of building blocks, mittens, balls, whatever). 

I have been terribly excited about continuing to organize and A has been helping some with that as well (she loves carrying things to the trash or recycling). Tuesday's assignment was to "set up an outbox"--also known as a clutter collector. The purpose of this is to put items in a "holding pattern" to see if you are ready to let them go. I catch myself often hanging on to items I rarely or never use because in the moment, it's generally faster to make the decision to keep it rather than donate or trash it. I have a box set up in our guest room for this purpose. Wednesday was to purge the pantry, which I fortunately had already done the previous week (along with the refrigerator and freezer). I'm still working on it a bit but it is coming along. I am really addicted to these interdesign bins and boxes. I need more of them for both freezers. I may use one to help organize my baking supplies.

Thursday involved picking a project that would take approximately 10 minutes and would make me feel better whenever I saw it. I decided to tackle the master bathroom drawers, which have not been organized since we lived here. So much junk had accumulated. Now everything is all clean.

This weekend's goal was the rest of the kitchen. I had already cleared out our tupperware drawer. Saturday I focused on clearing out all of the drawers, thinning out our over supply of dish rags, and organizing. I threw away massive numbers of expired spices and have boxed our old dish towels and am trying to determine if they should be kept for cleaning rags or donated (outbox!).

One of my least favorite spaces in the kitchen is where we keep our medicine. Until we figure out a better solution, I organized them into ours vs. A's medicine and put the commonly used ones in the front. It is much tidier than before so I think that will even relieve a bit of stress!

I am going to purchase a lazy susan for our spices and I may move Chad's coffee into this cabinet. I was glad to get everything on the top shelf sorted out (more baking supplies).

In terms of the kitchen, I still need to scour the sink and order a corner bookshelf for our cookbooks. Over the last month I have finished some other projects that I imagine won't be part of this challenge so I'll share here. 

I have mentioned to a number of people that our house borders on looking like a toy store explosion (maybe one day I will share the before photos). We had 250 colorful balls in a trash bag in the master closet along with a toy lawnmower and bowling pins; in our bedroom a dump truck full of legos, a doll stroller, a tunnel, and a child-sized lawn chair hung out against the wall. I had arts and craft supplies shoved onto a shelf in our game closet and lots of toys busting out of our coat closet. Our living room would be wall to wall toys if we let A have her way since she loves to pile all of her toys in one place and remove everything that belongs in one place and shove it somewhere else, and you can understand why I would be happy to be organizing.

This is the odd way in which A plays

I worked on clearing off two shelves in our game closet so that I could put all of the larger toys that typically were in the living room under the end table, in her closet, or by my bed. I moved all of the arts and supplies into a shoe organizer on the door (thank you, Pinterest...!) and was able to fit her larger toys along the floor on the bottom of the closet.

There are still some toys in the coat closet but I also better organized that and used an additional shoe organizer to store winter accessories for the family.

Embarrassingly, we had with a massive number of plastic bags shoved in the laundry room and in A's dresser. We reuse them, especially for trash in her room, but I still feel guilty I haven't moved to reusable bags for grocery shopping yet. This picture definitely reminds me that I should (am I the last to do this? I need recommendations). I took approximately 25 bags and rolled them into an old diaper wipes container so they dispense and are tidy. I folded about 100 more bags into triangles and stored in a shoe box. I put the rest in a large bag in my trunk and will drop them off at the grocery store or recycling center soon.

That's right, I will fold grocery bags but not laundry.

In terms of reviewing how well I have done this past week (because I like to analyze and grade) overall, my performance has been widely variable. I have not limited my screen time effectively in the evenings, A's bedtime is still too late, I have only been on the treadmill once, and I continue to go to bed really late. My writing was hit or miss last week. We got a manuscript R&R but we also got a rejection (that we have since resubmitted elsewhere). I worked on the approach for the grant coming due soon but I was also distracted a lot. We have not scheduled a date night. So, not great. That said, clearly I'm engaged in this organizational challenge (I'm also participating in a kindness challenge which is a story for another blog) but not stressing over folding laundry, I am using RescueTime, continuing to schedule my tasks on Sunday nights, I didn't work on Wednesday or Friday evenings, I am working on mindless eating and making better choices (I've stayed within my calories most every day, had limited snacking, and not had any soda), and I finished my two books already this month (one selected by the book club I'm in and another recommended by my TA). So those are good things in a variety of areas. My major goals this week are to--submit the approach to the grant consultant and submit the entire draft to the stats consultant, prep for the beginning of the semester, call for appointments for A to get a hair cut and teeth cleaned, and clean & organize the laundry room (which is going to be a big job).