Two steps forward, one step back. Repeat. Progress.

There’s nothing like a massive floor overhaul to force me to make a desperate attempt to organize. It never works; it always ends up with me shuffling every little doll shoe and puzzle piece into an old Pampers box and while telling myself that THIS time I’ll remember where this or that is RIGHT here. In the closet. Next to 3 other boxes of little nick-nacks and crap off my counters and book case wherein lies the same whispered promise that I’ll come back soon.

Ha! Really, I have gotten to the point where I laugh at myself anymore during these situations. I whisper sweet nothings to myself such as I’ll come back and look through that box this weekend.

What’s funny is I’m not a pack rat. Not anymore, anyway. (That’s a conversation for another day.) I’m happy to get rid of stuff via the trash or donation, but it’s hard to find the time! I’m very low maintenance, personally. Quite a minimalist these days. (Man, someone around here should be!) Working from home affords me the ability to keep a limited wardrobe for work and no one notices if I pick up my kids from school in the same jeans as the day before. (And if they do, I don’t want to be their friend anyway.)

So yesterday I’m going through a bookcase where I’ve been saving up to five years’ worth of this one little magazine that I really like to read called Guideposts. (Notice I haven’t read any of them since my first kid was born?) I’ve been saving them with the hopes of reading them. I should add that I don’t have any other magazine subscriptions, not that I subscribe to, anyway. My mom sends my kids Highlights and my husband gets a gift subscription to one of the Golf magazines. I don’t care how cheap those subscriptions are, I’m positive that they get money selling your name to a hundred other places and that’s why the subscription fee can be so low. Since I stopped ordering subscriptions, junk mail has practically ceased! The down side is no more Publisher’s Clearing House mail. Awe, shucks. (Not.)

So, I sucked up all the courage I had and put all those magazines in the recycling bin! (Not without tearing off all the address tags to go in the shredder.) That was hard to do AND even harder not to let ADD set in and get sidetracked reading some stories! They’ll keep coming and now I won’t feel like I need to read back issues before delving into the current one. The stories are really touching and I think I’ll read some of them to my kids so they can get a glimpse of life and struggle in the big world (which apparently revolves around them, donchaknow?) I ended up with a bucket of books that got relocated to some shelves downstairs and more papers added to my husband’s box of personal stuff that I keep adding to, yet he never goes through.

I read something recently that really hit home for me. Everything in your house should have a home. A light bulb went on in my head when I read that. THAT right there is my biggest problem! I’m always asking myself why my house is such a pitiful mess when it seems I’m always cleaning?! Because all I’m doing is shuffling crap around in my cupboards and on the counters. Back and forth, round and round. It’s maddening!

But now I am armed with that knowledge and have already made some improvements with my kitchen cupboards (detailed in a future post) and since I made those changes, they remain mostly organized still. My little 3 square feet of counter space that I cleaned last week is still clean. I got it to a maintenance level of clean — my key goal in any of my organizing nowadays. Many things that seemed to have a home on that counter now have a home elsewhere (the toaster and bread box are what remain on that spot).

Like I said, major floor overhaul going on right now. I spent the last two days cleaning & moving crap around and pulling up carpet and vinyl tile. The kitchen, dining, and living areas are a disaster right now with stacked chairs, bare floor, and praying I got up all the 6 billion staples that held down that flooring. (I’m not a fan of flooring installers right now. There’s just absolutely no way that floor needed that many staples. Damn.) I’ll spare you the picture of my blistered hand from my staple yanking fun.

Near future post will entail all the fun I’m having with this renovation.

Cleaning with kids in the house is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos.

Checklist

If I’m really going to keep myself accountable, I should probably start with a checklist, eh?

I’ll start with a little scenario about this house. It is a mere 20 years old, but looks like it’s been through a hurricane. Part of that is having three absolutely insane kids, but part of that the 90’s style, the builder’s idiocy (bad ceiling and ZERO storage. WTF!?), the previous owner’s “upgrade”,  and the design of the house – a split level with 2 bedrooms up and 2 down.  We clearly weren’t thinking about kids when we bought this house. Little kids don’t want to sleep downstairs. In the dark. Alone. So all five of us are shoved into two bedrooms upstairs.

Aside from aesthetic upgrades to this house, I personally just want to get more organized. I’ve been purging a lot of stuff and it feels GOOD! It’s one thing when I have stuff, but then there are kids stuff, hubby’s stuff, stuff to file, etc. Whenever I find the time to organize, I get so deep into it, I make a worse mess! And of course I end up trashing all progress, throwing it all in a box (or six) setting it aside not remembering where anything is days later. I’m a mess.

Flylady.net has been a blessing. I found out about that site maybe 7 years or so ago, before I even had kids. I needed it badly then so you can imagine how bad I need it now. They even have their schedule in a free Cozi app. I don’t do it every day, but I think of it often which motivates me to do something around the house every day over and above the usual dishes and laundry which, let’s face it, is sometimes all we have time for right there!

So, in the most simplest of terms, my goals are:

• create a consistent daily cleaning routine
• PURGE all my “stuff”
• upgrade the house however I can on our very tight budget
• find myself again

I’m a mom first and I know that my habits, good or bad, are watched closely by these little beings. This all is mainly for my sanity, but I want to be a good role model for the kids. After all, something needs to balance out my horrible habit of swearing.