We're Finally ALMOST Settled!

Over the past two weeks, Scott and I have packed up one house, moved almost two hours away from my hometown, and half-unpacked into our much smaller new house. To me, no matter where you live, it's always called your "house." Whether you live in a brick house, a mobile home, a travel trailer, or a tent, I always refer to it as your "home." So to be clear and honest, we moved to my new house, which is actually a teeny tiny 2 bedroom mobile home.

When the idea to downsize was first thrown around, the only thing I was throwing was a tantrum or a hissy fit. I did NOT want to downsize, and I did NOT want to live in a tiny mobile home. I, for one do not have an issue with living in a mobile home, as I've already lived in two myself. The real issue I have is the way mobile homes somehow manage to not allow you to really do much cute decorating. They are all pre-made with flower wallpaper in the kitchen and paisley in the bathroom and some speckle kind in the bedrooms and den. Lovely, yet totally not the cutest in the world. And in this world of mansions on pinterest, I wanted our new place to be one where I could make the cutest decorations and craft my way to an awesome house. Unfortunately, I've been unable to make my paintings match the flower wallpaper in the kitchen (I think I may paint over it in the near future) as of yet.

Once I gave in to the actual "idea" of moving and I agreed to move to this tiny place, I felt my anxiety rise daily. We lived in a three bedroom, two bath house and we were already bursting at the seams! How was I going to downsize my precious things? Well, even now I really can't tell you how I did it, but I know that I did give away a LOT of my things and clothes, but I can also lend you the keys to the TWO storage places we rented to hold all of OUR junk we refused to part with. The plan is to continue to unpack and rid ourselves of even more junk, and hopefully we can downsize further to only  have one storage unit. 

Then, moving weekend(s) came and went and I moseyed around the house packing this and that. The final moving weekend came and we were down to crunch time, and I didn't have nearly enough packed. Needless to say, things were thrown into boxes, a million trips were made to drop off boxes, empty most of them, only to bring them back and refill them again with more stuff. And when you're emptying boxes in a hurry, you kind of fling it here and there just to get it out. And Scott was my not so neat flinger.  

Once most of the stuff was moved out of our old house, my mom drove to our new house with a load of stuff to help us out. When she got back, she explained that our house was extremely messy and that they just had to dump things out of boxes to get them to re-use, so I shouldn't freak out when I finally go to it. I prepared myself for WWII and that's pretty much what I got. I couldn't get the mile high pile of clothes on the couch into the closet, because I couldn't even get to the closet for the boxes and piles of stuff on the way and blocking the door. It was like walking into a Hoarder's Hell. Boxes and junk piled higher than me. And this was where I was going to live. 

Needless to say, my crippling anxiety about the situation and Scott's mother graciously allowing us to stay with her for a few days to escape allowed me to determinely unpack one box at a time. It was like, "One down, a million more to go." Slowly, I started to see a little progress. Then a little more. Now, I'm happy to say that I'm fully stretched out in my living room floor typing this, and if I look ahead, I can only see one half empty box (now we're not going to look behind me...) I still have several good days worth of unpacking, sorting, throwing out, and organizing to do, but hopefully we will knock out a lot of that this weekend.

Last weekend, Scott helped me clean out one whole side of his mother's shed, and that is going to be my new workspace! (I am SO so excited about having an "office" away from home.) My fingers were getting antsy to create something, so I made a napkin holder and a jewelry box in about an hour just to get my feet wet a little! I will finally have a place to use my tools and to get away from the house for a little while! I am really anxious to have this house unpacked and just to focus on what the day brings.

All in all, my house doesn't look so tiny. I've seen it empty, I've seen it filled to the ceiling, and now I'm watching it unfold into a real home. I'm glad we downsized, because I was able to rid myself of a lot of useless clutter, and we both needed to do that!  Would I do packing differently and start earlier? Of course. But this move was needed, and we're closer to the kids and Scott's work. He gets home earlier, and I have him with me earlier, which we both enjoy. Downsizing is scary and it still makes me cringe... but I'm learning that sometimes it's for the best and a great way to have a fresh start. We won't live here forever, and we're not sure how long we will stay here, but for now, this is home.

So I Keep On Unpacking...

As I saw on a fellow facebook friend's status, "I think I can, I think I can." Unpack our gazillion boxes, that is. I wrote yesterday morning about how many boxes there are and how it looked like a hoarders house right now with so many boxes, and it was really like that. (See, I said "was".) Well, now it looks like half a hoarders house... because I cleared quite a few boxes of junk out yesterday. That means my method of decluttering before we moved was only half successful. Let's just say that FEMA isn't considering moving in anymore, but we may could still qualify for OCD hoarders if they were desperate for participants.

I've really had to learn how to throw things out and now feel that nagging guilty feeling.  You know the one where you find things that you KNOW other people would like, and you PROMISE that if you keep it you will get it to them, but you also KNOW that it will just sit in your floor for the next two years until you finally throw it away when you should have done that in the first place. And I would rather donate "things" and "clothes" to an actual shelter than to goodwill, because at the shelter those people don't have to pay for them. And Goodwill has some steep prices for other people's stuff sometimes, which I find repulsive, because it was GIVEN to them in the first place. And aren't they supposed to be helping people? They have shirts for $4.99...  A LOT of people are shopping there, because they can't affort to pay $4.99 a shirt. G-O-O-D-W-I-L-L... hence the name.

There's a homeless shelter around Prattville, and they meet once a month to distribute clothing and items to those in need. My mom and brother, Micah, decided to go work there one Saturday, and they have been collecting clothing to carry back since! They said there wasn't nearly enough clothing to go around to keep people warm, and these were real families like we all have! Imagine if your child was freezing cold and someone handed you a jacket their own child had just grown out of... what a blessing that would be! So, please remember the homeless families who have been struck hard by the devastation of our economy and misfortune, and when you do your spring cleaning on your closet and the closets of your family members, remember to bring those clothes that you don't wear to those who will. For more information, please contact me through my facebook page by clicking on the link below.

www.facebook.com/makeupandmudboutique



Just Breaks My Heart!

On to my next subject:

Today I have a BIG goal, and I'm almost hesitant to write it, because what if it's like a birthday wish? Like if I actually say it out loud or in this case, write it to the world (or my 5 blog followers in this situation), then what if it doesn't come true, because I "told someone?" Oh well, here goes:

Today I want to unpack enough boxes, organize enough junk, throw out enough old stuff, and rearrange neatly enough so we can spend tomorrow night in our new place.

Notice how I wrote the black words on top of BRIGHT yellow? Well, Yellow is supposed to be a "stimulating" color, instilling optimism and energy and it has been said to "carry the promise of a positive future."  Now that may just be a lot of junk, but I'll take what I can get... anything to "stimulate" me to get ahold of my BIG load of junk in our house.

Have you ever downsized? Magazines and specialists say that if people effectively downsize and rid themselved of things that do not bring joy to their life, they can live much more happily than the person in a 3000 square foot house with plenty of room to hold those meaningless items. I do believe that I do better if I have less choices. Like when half of my craft supplies were packed, I made a LOT more progress actually, because my choices were limited and I had only a few things to work with, therefore the time I would have spend pondering over what to make was practically eliminated. I have either A or B, not ABCDEFGHIJKL to choose from.

In this new place, I want to be organized and I want it to look CHEERFUL, COMFORTABLE, and WELCOMING. I want people to walk in and feel like they're right at home and not have to step over boxes or see my latest paint creation drying on the coffee table.

On a good note, Scott's mother, Dianne, has so gratiously allowed me to use half of her outside shed as my "workstation" to sand and paint, create and embellish, and I can't wait! I'm excited about getting my shelves in there and organizing my craft glass to paint and sanding on my jewelry boxes to make them beautiful.

I'm going to adjust, but it will take a while. 

Moving Mayhem & Clutter Chaos

As I've written in past posts, we are moving about an hour and a half to two hours away from where we live now. We will be out of our current house by January 31, so we're steadily packing boxes, driving furniture to the new place, unpacking and organizing there, and starting back over at our current house. And each time we come back to our house we're currently living in, I would be willing to swear that somehow our stuff still to pack somehow grew while we were gone. And by stuff, yes, I mean junk. Clutter. Stuff I should-a thrown out a few years ago.

I'm a good packer. I'm an efficient packer, careful to wrap breakable items and label the boxes according to items inside and rooms it should go in. I'm organized with that.

What I'm not organized with is all of the junk I have managed to accumulate over the past few years since I moved out of my parents house. I even found a box that I never unpacked from when we moved to where I live now! I had just stuck it in the top of a spare closet. When I found it, there I went, distracted down memory lane of old Wal-Mart Receipts and half full Sticky Note tablets. If I haven't needed anything out of that box in all of this time, don't you think the obvious thing to do would be to chunk it right away without going through the contents? Yes. Was I able to do that? No.

I am a packrat, not a hoarder, but a keeper of tiny things that cost me more money and time to keep them unorganized than it would be to throw them out and buy it again if I needed it. What kind of items am I talking about?

Hm... here's one: Bobby Pins. I'm going through a box, and there's a lone bobby pin in the bottom of the box.

Now there are 48 brand new ones under the bathroom counter, but instead of tossing it in the trash, I'm the person who wastes 5 minutes to pick up the bobby pin and carry it to the bathroom, find the others that I already have, put the found one in with them, and then I'm SUPPOSED to go back to going through the original box right?

Well, there's my other problem....

As I'm placing the lonely found bobby pin in with the others, because I just couldn't throw out a $0.01 BOBBY PIN ( Gasp!), I notice an ink pen in the bottom of the hair bin. Which I just HAVE to take to put in the box with all of the other pens. And there I notice one single sock. And it goes on and on and on.  Now remember that ALL of this time, I have neither packed one single box nor have I finished cleaning out the original box I was going through.

By this time, I have a half empty box I didn't finish going through, the hair supply box pulled out from underneath the bathroom cabinet (still sitting in the floor), and the box of ink pens and pencils out on the table. Let me do this for a few days, and you can imagine how far I'm getting with this packing ordeal. And it ALL could be avoided if I would just think long and hard enough to THROW THE BOBBY PIN AWAY IN THE FIRST PLACE!

What items are my main issues?

Panties... I don't want to get rid of any, even though I probably couldn't even fit my butt in them anymore... they're cute! But, I reluctantly have purged the stash...

Markers, Pens, Pencils, Crayons... Art supplies, you name it! We have SO many pens and pencils, I don't know what to do with them all!

Junk... Just JUNK (PERFECT picture I found in the internet)... a marker, a screwdriver, a million rubber bands, old gift cards, tiny paper to open... just random junk. I have a LOT.

I'm a note-taker, a list maker, a writer-downer of just whatever comes to mind.  And there you have it.  And now what I have is a million sheets of paper with random things on them that I've written since I've been home from work, and I've had time to actually find and jot down whatever I find that I may want to remember in the future.

And you know what my main "Inhibitor of Packing" is? BOREDOM. I can't watch T.V. because I have to focus on what I'm doing, so tv and the internet are out of the question if I'm actually going to be productive. The radio gets annoying after an hour or so, and I can't talk on the phone, hold it to my ear, and pack boxes... It's just a boring process that wasn't meant to be fun. And it's not. Fun. 

Lonely Night Rambles!

I'm writing this post out of sheer boredom... not boredom due to the fact that I have nothing to do. No, the kind of boredom that breeds from not wanting to do the things you need to do. Or in this case, the many things I need to do... pack is number one, reply to e-mails, finish organizing my jewelry inventory, pack, paint some things, pack, edit about 20 new jewelry pictures, did I mention that I need to PACK?

UGH... I have boxes. Check. Packing Tape? Check. Things needing to be packed? Check. Motivation to pick up those items and put them in a box? Um... no.

I look around my house and all I see is craft clutter. I see that, because that's really what is all around my house right now. But, I can't blame it on just not wanting to pack. I also don't want to go put away the laundry, wash the dishes, unload the dishwasher, wash/dry clothes, fold the clothes, etc. Honestly, I wish I didn't have anything to do right now but sit in front of a HUGE canvas and paint anything that comes to mind while I sit right by my best friends and they do the same. I wish that Scott and the kids could be playing and painting around with us too!

We're moving in 20 days, and I am very nervous, almost like starting a new school. What if my new city doesn't like me? I'm not the same person I used to be... and I may not fit in quite as well. On a good note, I've decided that I need more people interaction on a regular basis, someone other than my chihuahua, so I may be getting a booth at the local flea market either in Valley, AL or Opelika, AL... not sure which one yet. Plus, that will give me a place to sell some of my items that I make or redo, or "upcycle" instead of selling solely online in etsy, that was I actually have to talk to real people and interact with them... that will be a good reason to get out of the house, and I'm finding myself anticipating setting up my booth.

All in all... boredom wins tonight, but I think I just may go pack one more box, just to feel a little less lazy and a little more productive. Tonight, I miss my friends and my family... If you're reading this.. you're one of those people! I love you all!

Chel

MOVING SALE: Our House NOW!

Hello again! I have an idea that I hope to turn into an opportunity, but I'll need your help with that!


First of all, We are MOVING! Yes, we're moving to Valley, Alabama in January. We live in Tallassee now, and we were living here, because it was half way between my work and Scott's work. With me not working now, it seems crazy for Scott to drive this whole way home. Also, we will be moving twenty minutes away from Izzy and Evan (Scott's Kiddo's), so making it to ball games and practices will be so much easier when we live only minutes away.


Those are the good things about the move. The Bad? Well, we're EXTREMELY downsizing and moving into a smaller place, so that we can save a little extra money to build a house in the future and pay off my existing and future medical bills (MRI's are EXPENSIVE)! Needless to say, we are going to be getting rid of a LOT of things that we have in our house now.


When we got married, we held on to what we both had before, and we combined that with our new wedding gifts... which means multiples like 4 crockpots, 3 camera cases, an extra king size mattress and box springs, end tables, decorations, etc. We have WAY too much stuff where we are now, much less where we are moving to.


Where you come in: We are planning on having a yard sale, but I'm having a little difficulty with this. I'm going to be getting rid of a lot of things that I've held on to, because they are important to me or just because they are just plain nice. And when you're cleaning out your home, it's hard to part with items that you like when you imagine random hagglers dumping it in their house. It's not junk to me. And it's too cold to have a yard sale right now anyway.


So here's the plan: Anyone who is interested in anything is more than welcome to come to our house and go through the stuff we are getting rid of. Yard sale prices still apply, but I will feel a LOT better if I know that someone I know is going to actually appreciate what they're getting, AND I'm much more likely to get rid of a LOT more if someone is in front of me actually wanting it.

I'm also "DE-STASHING" my craft room as well, so all you crafters come on over!!

Here is an idea of the stuff we have for sale:



A Parker Challenger Compound Bow, BRAND NEW arrows and arrowheads (still in box), MANY accessories, hard case uncluded, used twice! (Paid over $425)

Yamaha TTR125L Dirtbike 2007, very well maintained, low riding time, new back tire, kept in garage

ALL of my dirtbike accessories, including my helmet, roost, boots, pads, etc

Picture Frames

Candle Holders

Floral Arrangement Items (including flowers from Hobby Lobby-Never used)

Craft Bird Houses

Pots and Pans

Dishes

TONS of clothes (Sizes 3-7 Juniors, and 2-5 Womens) NICE and well maintained... I just don't work, so I don't need as many nice work outfits. Also have nice coats and jackets.

Womens Shoes (Size 5-6) some hardly worn or not worn at all

Purses (Some not used ever)

Closet Hanging Organization Bin

One desk

End Tables

MANY books

Bags and Beach Bags

Wood Router (never opened)

Wood Jigsaw (Black and Decker) with blades (used once for 2 minutes)

Stuffed Animals

Kids clothes (girls size 6-8, boys size 5-7)

Kids Toys (Some never opened)

Ornaments (TONS, Some brand new)

Mens Clothes (Medium-XL)

Organizational Baskets and Bins

Wooden Signs

Wall Decor

Housewares

Glass Cake Stand (we got a beautiful one for our wedding- this one is our old one-perfect condition)

DVD's

Paris Bathroom Decor Set-Up (We use it now... just no room for it)

Pet Items

2 kids rocking chairs

1 tiny toddler rocking chair

2 old charcoal grills

Kitchen Stuff

2 brand new baseball bat bags

TONS of makeup (some never used... was too dark for me)

Make-up Cases (mostly Estee Lauder)

exercise equipment

lamps

1 king size new bed frame

2 twin boxsprings

1 king size mattress

one wooden floor baby bassinett that rocks

Thomas Kinkade Painting

Laundry Hampers

MUCH MUCH MORE



The options are endess... We literally have bins and bins of clothes to get rid of, mostly mine. If anyone wants to just take a day to ride out (It's 30 minutes from Montgomery) and look, you're more than welcome to. I'm home almost every day, and I won't hover over your shoulder! I'm sure that if you found something you liked, I'd be much more willing to part with it if you were here than if it was online. I love my stuff... but it's time to move on and start fresh!!



Just send me a message!!

A Brand NEW Approach to Cleaning

Good Morning Everyone! (By the way, I'm totally faking this *CHEERY* attitude, because this chilly weather makes me want to go crawl right back in the bed... just to let you know.)  Now that we have that out in the open, I'll continue.

This post is about my path to a new MUCH more organized life.  Thinking about having an "Organized Life" really reminds me about how we think about our senses. While we often remember to give Sight and Smell a slot in our senses category area, a good majority of people forget that people actually have and use FIVE senses: Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Smell.

Similarly, when the term "organized" comes into play, what is the first thing you think of? Do you only think of how un-clean and "dis-organized" your house is right now? What I'm learning is that I can "pick up" the clutter in my home all I want, but I also have to remember that there is Mental Clutter, Financial Clutter, Guilty Clutter, Mourning Clutter, Sentimental Clutter,  Sad Clutter, Potentially Useful Clutter, Memory Clutter, "I Might Need It One Day" Clutter, Relationship Clutter, Time Clutter... and the list goes on and on and on. I'm just a clutterbug I guess!

Have you ever really thought deep down about what kind clutter you may be carrying around? I know I hadn't until recently.  I found myself beginning to feel overwhelmed, but I couldn't quite put my finger on the cause of this sudden stress.  Sound familiar?  For more information on types of clutter and how to take control of your clutter, click on the links below. (Don't forget to come back to the good stuff!)

{FYI: I'm about to tell you why these approaches do NOT work for me, but they may work for you.}

6 Types of Clutter
Oprah's Clutter Control Remedies
How Clutter Control Affects You

I have never really thought of myself as an organized person. In the past, I was never stressed out enough to feel the need seek out a cause to blame it on. That sure has changed! In the past 6 months, I've struggled with so many new changes in my life, and I've looked near and far for the main cause of the changes. The only answer I can come up with is that my changes were just in God's plan for me. That's fine with me, because I would rather be a part of God's plan and not understand why he dealt me these cards than be in a rough situation that I was responsible for on my own. I think that's why the clutter in my life is so frustrating: I did it to myself.

BACK to the point: (See, the same thing happens when I try to clean: I get DISTRACTED!)

If you open any "Lady" magazine, you can almost bet that somewhere inside there will be at least one article about household organization. I'm waiting for the day when all of the "Women's" magazines realize that they just rotate advice around from one article to the next... and it doesn't work half of the time.

Common advice doesn't always work for everyone, and it amazes me that magazine editors still haven't created a few more reasonable or unique approaches to housework. Below, I have listed a few "Common Clutter-Clearing Tips" that I see ALL the time. So, underneath each useless tip is a little tidbit of what I think about it and why it doesn't work for me.

The Common Advice 

• Walk into a room and pick up everything you see that doesn't belong there.

                            - I don't like this tip, because I feel like the writer is trying to make me feel like an idiot. Obviously, IF I could go into a room and pick up everything out of place and it was really that easy, there's a pretty good chance that I wouldn't need to read the article in the first place. I would have already picked everything up and put it away. Strike One... NEXT.

• Everything in your house needs to have a "place" where it belongs.

                             -  REALLY? Everything needs to have a place? Uh yea, obviously. And if I KNEW how to make a place for everything, again, I wouldn't be reading the article. I want to know HOW to find a place for everything. A "REASONABLE" how-to... Not one of those, "Save 20 cereal boxes and cover them with wall paper and have your husband use his circular saw to cut eleven of the thirteen 2x4's you had to buy from 'Herald's Home Place' specifically for this project" and hotglue them together and so forth.  That is NOT the norm...

                             - First of all, I said "Herald's Home Place," because there is a 50/50 chance that you will have never heard of the hardware store recommended in the magazine, the one with "the lowest price around." Around what? Sometimes I think writers google all over to find the store with the cheapest lumber prices, even if the only one in the entire United States is in Idaho. Second of all, I can almost promise you that IF you indeed routinely volunteer your husband and his circular saw for every cereal box DIY craft that you run just happen to across, there's a good chance you will need to read to the "Why Does My Husband Avoid ME" printed a few pages over. Long point short: Give us some eco-friendly, easy, CHEAP ways to organize. Strike Two... NEXT.

• Only save the "Really Special Artwork" that your child has made, and take digital pictures of the rest. You can print the pictures and look at them forever without the clutter of all of the coloring pages.

                            -  Ok, let me be clear for those who do not know me personally: I am not a mother to a biological child.  I do, however, have two creative little stepchildren who constantly draw and design oodles of pictures and items for their Daddy and me. I even have a box in the top of our closet with special little keepsakes they have created. While they are only at our house every other weekend, they still draw like 10 pictures at a time... each. I wish I knew how many "books" with silly little stories they have created and stapled together for us, but I lost count a while ago. And I've kept every single one.

                            - My point is: I don't want to take a picture of their artwork. And it's probably not for the reason that you may think. I don't want to take a picture and toss out the art work, because I just don't agree with the reasoning. You're swapping out an original for a duplicate. Printed pictures are also going to take up space, right? So, you might say, "I'll burn the pictures of their artwork on a c.d. to save space."  Really? You're going to take the time to round up the artwork, take an individual photo of each page (usually double sided as well), so around two pictures of EACH page, and upload or scan them into your computer, name each picture describing what it is, who drew it, and what year it was made. Then, you're going to either upload the files to Rite Aid and drive there to pick up your child's artwork pictures? Or if you opt for the Image C.D. route, are you going to put the images in a folder and burn a million C.D.s and then label each C.D. and create a way to organize them?

                          -Either way, you're going to be in a bad mood, because you just threw our your kid's precious artwork! Just take twenty minutes and stack each paper individually, neatly, with one on top of the other and put it in a clear $4 bin from Wal-Mart and slide it under the bed or put it up in the top of the closet. Do you really think you're going to have that day where you say, "You know what? I don't have anything to do today. I think I'm going to go find the disc with Tommy's artwork from 2nd grade and look at all of those pretty scribbles on the computer this afternoon?" Please just stop kidding yourself.

                        -In reality, you are going to want to pull out that old dusty box of "Scribbles" after your "baby boy" moves off to college and cry as you have your midlife crisis, wishing that he was five years old again. You actually DESERVE to keep the originals as proof that you actually kept another tiny teacup human alive AND they were somewhat creative. SCORE! (ha... that makes me crack up to hear someone say that, and I've been looking for a place to throw that in!)

Back to the point: You'll be in even more distress if you regret throwing the originals away. Most of our world is digital and made up of replicas, so I think there's something special about original items to bring you back in time. So if someome tells you to take a picture of your kids artwork and "bid it farewell," then I suggest that you tell them to go take a picture of their grandmother's 100 year old china cabinet and sell it for $10 at a yard sale... Strike three... THE MAGAZINE ADVICE COLUMNS LOSE.

                       -(I HAVE to add this last tidbit just because it annoys me to read it over and over... so here's one more piece of useless advice.)

• Ask yourself, "Do I REALLY need this?" If the answer is "No," then toss it out.

                       - What kind of dilusional world do these overpaid organizers live in? Don't they think that IF indeed you are reading an article on how to get organized, then you have probably already asked yourself IF you need a specific item like a million times already, and the answer is, "Yes. Yes I do need to keep the busted float from the beach trip in 1999, because it CAN be fixed. And what if there's a time in life where we don't have the money to buy another $2 float? When everyone else needs a float and they can't afford to buy one, I won't have to worry about anything, because I kept AND fixed mine!"

                       - Now we're just going to ignore the fact that IF you did happen to keep a ripped $2 float for 12 years, waiting to need to fix it during a economical depression, then you are probably not JUST a "tad bit unorganized." You're probably well on your way to arriving at your next "Hoarders Anonymous" meeting. The main point I'm trying to make is, people who keep pure crap and wierd junk are horrible at organizing, but they have a freakishly awesome ability to rationalize anything. They will indeed ask theirselves IF they actually need something, and the ALWAYS "yes". I ask myself all the time if I REALLY need something, and I'm so distracted and unorganized that sometimes I even forget to answer! :)

The REAL Bottom Line:  Don't these Martha Stewart clones think that if everyone could/would "spend twenty minutes a day" putting away items that we wouldn't have an issue with clutter?

BACK TO MY OWN MESSY HOUSE:

I think I may have FINALLY found the solution to my clutter... FLYLADY!!!

You have GOT to check out this site! FLYLADY takes a whole new approach to cleaning, and I believe she specifically works well for people with "Attention Issues," much like myself. She teaches you how to use new approaches to my three main demons: PROCRASTINATION, GETTING SIDETRACKED and BOREDOM! I LOVE this site!

One of the HUGE things I find motivating about this new sight is that the FLYLADY herself, Marla Cilley, is not one of those "Organizing Fanatics" that was practically born obsessively color coordinating and organizing her crayons when she was like 3. She didn't spend her childhood making her parents beam with pride at how clean she kept her room. No, Ms. Cilley was once a dysfunctional personal herself, so she really knows what she's talking about. Regular methods didn't work for her, either. LOVE IT!

I have found that I work much better if I set my own goals rather than follow another person's schedule. All of our lives are going in different directions, right? All I know is, when I found this site, I just about peed in my pants with excitement, because I finally found someone who just seemed to "get" me and my organizational issues. I now have a new title to add to my chaos: I am a... "FLY Baby."

Here are a few links to get you on the right track!

Getting Started with FLYLADY
Start with BABYSTEPS
What to Expect from FLYLADY

So, if you want to try to make an attempt at become more organized and efficient and the regular methods just aren't helping you become successful, I recommend that you check out FLYLADY.  I really don't see how it could hurt!

Here are a few of the motivational pictures and quotes that I use to "BOOST" my cleaning genes...

Now, in the words of the FLYLADY herself.... "Go Shine Your Sink!"

Decorating Daydreams.... Sigh...

I am absolutely so fed up with the clutter and chaos in our house. I moved to college, back home to my parent's house for three weeks, then moved to Deatsville for almost 4 years, then moved to an apartment in Montgomery for a year, and now we live in Tallassee. And this whole time, I have accumulated more junk than you can imagine.

Lately, I have been working to reduce the clutter in my house,because I read that the clutter in your house causes clutter in your life. So, I joined Clutterer's Anonymous. That's right, I'm addicted to clutter. Actually, I have that whole mentality, "I'm may be able to use this one day." or the famous, "I'm saving that, because I'm going to use it on a project one day." I hate to get rid of things, and I thought the clutter book was a joke when Scott brought it to me in the store. And while I indeed took offense to his less than subtle hint, I have to admit that almost everything it said was true.

So, I've been googling (while I procrastinated cleaning, of course) little ways to spruce up your home and reduce clutter. At first it was like two steps forward, three steps back. I have cleaning ADD. I get distracted by the smallest things, and I will truly get lost in my own world for hours and hours. I have no idea where my time goes sometimes. Well, as I've been slowly clearing out and cleaning up, I've found myself changing my outlook about the house. I shrieked, "SSScccccOOOOTTTT!!!!! Come here PLEASE!!!" the other day when I found his jogging shorts on the bathroom floor. And all I could do is point to them and say, "No! I don't think so!" He looked at me like I had lost my mind, and he was like, "Man, someone is changing their mind a little huh?" (The day before you probably couldn't see the floor because of all of my crap.) And it's not like the rest of the house was clean, because it was still a wreck. But, I had cleaned the bathroom, and I wanted to see my progress. And slowly but surely, progress is what I am making!

I decided that I couldn't pick up the house unless I clean out the house. With the new wedding gifts and his stuff moving in and mingling with my junk, we have a lot of things that need to be organized! But, I also realized that our decorations are... nonexistent. So, I've also been redoing different items to give us a new look with a frugal approach. A nonexistent money approach actually. I'll post some pictures soon! Before and after...

For now, I'm going to pretend that our house is spotless, and I'm going to take you on a virtual tour of our imaginary home. My dream home. My motivation. Oh, and of course I threw in a few pictures of my dream cars... OLD HEARSES. I have wanted one since I was little... Here we go.....