September 26th, 2011

Getting Rid of It

Once, I wrote a blog post about having too much stuff. And guess what, here it is  a year later and not only do I still have too much stuff, I have more stuff. Sure, I have managed to unload a few things, about 5 dvds and 10 books and a few garbage bags of clothes to the thrift store, but that barely made a dent. I emptied one of the closets I tend to stash stuff and this is the result:

And that is just the view from the doorway

Ugh.

So. Time to try again. I’m so torn. I could have a ton of stuff gone and just have a donation truck come and be done with it. But there is a lot of stuff. Would it be worth it to try and make any money? Not much is high dollar, so where should I draw the line. I could make some cash, but it could take some time. But. I’m a stay-at-home mom, I technically have time. Maybe I just need to prioritize better.

I’m also having a horrible time keeping up with housekeeping, in part because there is nowhere to put anything away. I figure I have about 15 hours a week of no toddler time, not counting the hours after bedtime because those are too variable to calculate. I’m basing this on 2 hours, twice a week for preschool and 1.5 hours of nap time every day.

What I would like to do over the next 3 months in improve my quality of life – organize my home, make some money and streamline my chores. I also would like to make some time for writing, but that is pretty much just a hobby, so excluding the odd paid post here or there, I definitely need to start making other things a priority during my dedicated task time.

I thought it would be fun to blog my little life makeover, share the tips and tricks I find as well as let you guys know the best ways I find to get rid of stuff. I’m also going to try out some time management apps for both the apple and android platforms. Good times.

To start, here are my preliminary goals:

Daily (by the end of each day):

1. Dishes done, sink empty
2. No clean clothes in dryer or laundry basket
3. Dining room table cleaned off
4. Drinkv64 ounces of water (I think this will help with my chronic headaches)
5. Bulk of the toys and books put away

Weekly:

1. Clean bathrooms
2. Mop kitchen floor
3. 90 minutes of working out
4. Vacuum under couch/chairs
5. to be determined

So, those of you laughing about what surely must be the deplorable condition of my home need to realize that I do all of these things, just erratically. And I sweep my kitchen floor pretty much daily, I just don’t mop it very often.

Also, we aren’t hoarders. We just have a lot of stuff and don’t like to throw it away. Heh. What has had a big impact though, is that we sold my parent’s house right after we moved into this house, so a lot of boxes of pictures, photo albums and mementos just got shoved in to closets. And we never dealt with it.

The second layer of weird stuff came when we emptied our upstairs to have to wood floors installed and stuff ended up shoved everywhere because right after the floors were done, there was the baby shower then I was working 70 hours a week to try an get my job set up for maternity leave and nothing ever got sorted out. And then there was a baby. Add to that the stuff we got when my husband’s grandfathers died and general baby stuff accumulation and it just ends up a mess. I never made fixing it a priority. Until now.

Obviously the additional component to all of this is that i need to just stop buying anything that isn’t consumable, like food or crayons. I need to get Spence a Halloween costume and I did buy a few decor items, but I’m hoping to craft a bit through the holiday season to use up the stuff I have and not buy anything more. I’ll make an exception if buying one thing (like a wreath form) will us up more things (like skeins of yarn and flowers that I already have).

I also need to figure out how to not let incoming stuff mess up the progress. I need to get preschool to paperless: reading flyers and writing down dates as the stuff comes in, ordering scholastic books right away, etc. It has only been a month and there is a small pile of papers. And the art work – need to figure out how to display, store or trash that, too.

Essentially, I need to get us down to only having things we use or love. I think organizing and purging will happen first, while working on sales, if possible. I’m just not sure if trying to sell things is worth not having them in the house anymore. I wish they had a What Not to Wear for houses.

April 12th, 2011

Starting the Herb Garden

Do you remember that post from months ago when I talked about gardening with a toddler? Well, I wrote it, made big plans in my head and in my usual Amy style, did nothing about them. Until now.

We stopped at the garden center the other day and Spencer liked it a lot less than I anticipated. I thought he’d love looking at all the plants and smelling the flowers and I think he might have had I let him run free, but I was alone and it was crowded and trapped in the cart he was. We made it out of there with a dahlia, cilantro and parsley with minimal cart rebellion.

Spencer ended up having a super late nap on Sunday, then went to the park so we didn’t end up planting anything until Monday afternoon. And I may or may not have forgotten about leaving them in full sun on a warm day until 5 pm. Needless to say, the cilantro seemed a little traumatized.

We dug holes and put the cilantro, parsley and basil in the ground. The cilantro and parsley came in those plant in the ground composting pots, never used those before. We’ll see how that goes. Next up, I put Spencer to work filling a pot we already had for the dahlia. It’s a little big, but I think this is one of those bushier dahlias and it should fill out a little wider. If not, well it will just look stupid.

And filling the pot? I made both of my critical errors of this gardening adventure. First, I only brought out one trowel. Once Spencer got a hold of it, there was no getting it back and I didn’t want to track dirt through the house to go get another one. The fact that I could just go through the side gate escaped me. I ended up using the now empty basil pot to scoop dirt.

Second, I forgot about the single minded toddler brain and started him digging for dirt way too close to the cilantro plant. My intention was to scoop up the dirt from the holes we dug for the herbs and then scavenge dirt from different areas of the garden. (Again – too lazy to go to the garage for the bag of potting soil I am pretty sure is in there.) Spencer thought differently and would only dig next to the already damaged cilantro. I went back and back filled most of the holes and I am hoping that with a new cover of mulch (I could write and entire post about my mulch love) I hope it looks fab ad not attacked by prairie dogs.

Next up? Better planning and starting the vegetable garden.

If you are wondering about the mismatched photos in the post, the pictures themselves are not the greatest (hard to snap photos with dirty fingers and a trowel wielding toddler), but the assignment today is about html editing and images for blogging tips. Go read, it is awesome. Or, maybe you knew all this already. Whatever.)

March 29th, 2011

The Blue Room

So, this is going to be embarrassing. You know that closet or drawer you have where you just kind of shove things and you ignore it until the drawer jams from having one menu too many shoved in the back. Well, it’s confession time. I have a whole room like that. And this week if you don’t see me much on twitter it is because I am organizing it, cleaning it, if I get it done maybe even some free sprucing of it. It is awful. Don’t believe me? I can’t believe I am putting this on the internet, but here we go:

So much crap. See the little bookcase by the window – half of it is filled with VHS tapes. V. H. S. There are bins of diapers, blankets, abandoned diaper bag and laundry.

I’m not sure which is worse, the falling down wall decal or the fact that those shipping boxes are from christmas.

There is also stuffed shoved behind the TV. Including a magic 8 ball. I asked it if I could get this room clean in a week; it answered, try again later. Not a good sign.

Surprisingly, the closet is the least of my worries. Maybe because I couldn’t get to it to shove things in to it.

So. You’ve seen the horror. What is the plan? Well, today I got a bunch of the trash out. The wall decal is coming down, the bags of books need to find a home… I would like to re-frame the print over the TV, maybe clear out the bulk of the movie discs (and tapes). I have no idea what to about toys that don’t fit in bins. We have two buckets of blocks, a car garage, two bigger trucks. They seem to be too big for shelves. How do you store your toys? I’d love to hear. I hope to have some after pictures on Monday. Woot! Wish me luck.

February 21st, 2011

Gardening with a Toddler

This is the first spring/summer that I will be attempting to garden with a kid out in the yard with me. Last year, we shut the yard down to survival mode, growing only a massive zucchini plant and doing only the smallest amount of maintenance for the ornamental plants and fruit trees. I didn’t even manage to keep up with the herb garden. Compared to the year before when we had giant sunflowers in the front yard and grew peppers, beans, tomatoes, herbs, lettuce, carrots and radishes in the back, last year was barren. I love the idea of growing food and eating seasonally beyond what is available at farmer’s markets. And let’s face it, more and more farmer’s market crops are trucked a considerable distance to get to the “local” market. Yes, I get that apples from 200 miles away are more local than Chilean grapes, but it still isn’t that local. Ahem.

Saturday morning was perfect for a little gardening. The ground was damp from the rainstorms so weeds pulled out easily. It was cloudy, no wind. Just perfect. Spencer and I were out back playing with bubbles and the soccer ball and he was busy by himself, so I thought it would be a good time to grab a bucket and pull some weeds here and there. He didn’t pay much attention at first, but then became intrigued by what I was doing. Came over by my side and immediately tried to yank a daffodil out of the ground. And it struck me.

I have no idea how to garden with a toddler.

See my foot? It is on a dead bee I noticed as he was rolling around.

Of course it will be an adventure, but how can I be productive and keep him entertained AND not destroy the garden in the process? How do I teach him that roses have thorns? That bees sting? Which plants stay in the ground and which get removed? It must all seem so arbitrary to a toddler.

Danger! Danger!

I need to remember that he is always paring attention. Once. Once! I threw a rotten orange behind that plant pictured above to keep Spencer from playing with it and get it off the grass. This was maybe 2 months ago and Spencer still throws perfectly good fruit back there and I have to go get it. Worst of all is when he wants to go back there and get it and comes close to getting rose to the face. These roses are at least 15 years old, some of the thorns are huge.

So. Safety of the toddler first, sanctity of the plants second. I get that. Spencer pulling out fledgling vegetables will be a tremendous test of my parenting patience. I get that. I did at least have a flash of brilliance that he could “help” by picking up leaves from the grass and putting them in the bucket. It kept him busy and I only had to fight off his urge to dump the bucket every 5 minutes.

"Helping"

I’m sure anyone who is a kid person or babysat a lot or had significantly younger siblings is laughing at me. But I spent most of my adult life actively avoiding the diapered ones. I have no clue how to do any of this or what toddlers are like. At all. This is one huge crazy adventure and learning experience. For both of us.