Goals: The January Review and The February New

Report on progress towards my yearly goals:

Fitness and Physical Appearance:

1. I will weigh less on January 1, 2016 than I do on January 1, 2015 by at least 30 pounds.

No change.

2. I will average at least 70,000 steps per week for every week of 2015. (This may be too low to achieve #1 above, so I'll adjust if necessary.)

According to my fitbit, I missed my goal be several miles. Week 1, I averaged 11,859 steps per day. Week 2: 10,141; Week 3: 6,262, and week 4: 8,308.
I'll need to step it up. (sorry.)

3. I will be stronger and more flexible and more fit.

Nope. But all is not lost. I sill have my legs. I can walk.

You may recall I downloaded a fitness routine "for beginners." Hah. I am low-impact walking (quickly) back to Leslie Sansone.


Finances:

1. We will owe less on January 1, 2016 than we do on January 1, 2015. (I have a specific number in mind, but I'm not comfortable sharing that here.)

Unfortunately, life happened. We will get it under control fairly quickly, though.

2. I will cook two new vegetarian meals a month until we find six we can put into the meal rotation.

Yay, finally, something went right! I made two vegetarian chilis. The second one was awesome and we'll keep it. 

link to recipe. I have to confess, I omitted the jalapenos and added corn and sweet potatoes. (or yams, whichever one is orange.) And yes, I ate mine over pasta. So good.

House:

1. I will declutter and organize the following areas:

a) Christmas and Holiday items. (Under the basement stairs, china cabinet, basement shelves.) I want to get this done this month. I am comitting to spending at least 15 minutes a day on it--except for days when I work more than six hours.

done.

b) Home office: papers, files, office drawers, command centre.
see February goals

c) Basement storage and recyclable area.
see February goals

d) Sell/Donate the boxes of books in the garage.
not yet. In the Spring.

2. Decorate the front and back hallway and the stairwell. (ORC Challenge starts April 2nd)
Talk to me in April.

3. Fix the bathrooms!
Not yet.

4. Begin the process to wire the house properly.
Not yet.

5. Spend one on one time with each child once a month.
My daughter and I went shopping for jeans and then out for hamburgers.
I didn't do anything specific with my son. 

Goals for February.

1. I just enrolled in a life-coaching course called "Re-discovering You." It's a 28 day challenge in self-improvement. My goal is to do all my homework every day.

2. Sea Change (Leo Babauta's course) switches focus from Meditation (from which I bailed completely, by the way) to healthy eating. I will come up with a plan for that, shortly. The first thing I'm going to do is stop drinking Diet Coke for the month. (Good thing it is a short month!)

3. A Simple Year, another course I am enrolled in focuses on "Busyness" this month. My goal is to do all the reading--and only those assignments I feel may be of value to me. I do not feel like my life is over-busy. (At least, not right now. It will be a different story starting in May through to September!)

3. Laundry seems to be a huge problem. I am not sure what it is. Are we not doing laundry frequently enough? (likely) or do we have too many clothes? (also likely)

sorry for the weird blur

So, I think I need to tackle the frequency problem before I can assess the second problem. I know that my clothing situation is under control: and I am pretty sure that my husband also has a reasonable number. So, the goal is for me to put one load into the wash every morning and have it transferred over at supper and folded and put away in the evening. Something like that.

4. Clean the basement!
The first area I need to address is the laundry room.

5. Paperwork.
Ugh. I have been stashing papers in a drawer of my desk for, oh, about a year. I don't mind doing this at all: I know where papers are if I need them. BUT. It is getting full and a lot of them are likely no longer needed. This is good prep for taxes, too.

6. Complete all homework assignments for Joshua Becker's decluttering module in A Simple Year.
  a. declutter car
  b. declutter two living areas in your home.
            bedroom's done!
  c. clear all functional surfaces.
  d. implement a "living with less" experiment.
  e. begin tackling a hard to declutter room or area. (see basement, above.)

7. Take one small step towards writing my Canadian History curriculum for children.

Whew. That's a lot. Almost too much for such a short little month!

Minimalism and Me: Decluttering

Before:

At noon today:

at 4pm today:

Oh my goodness, you guys. The instant that second shelf came out I felt like 20 pounds had just rolled off my shoulders. So odd. So freeing. Both of the kids do not like it.

This month, I signed up for the course "A Simple Year" because I wanted to explore minimalism and see whether it's for me. Decluttering was the first module and that makes sense because is the first step towards the simple life. I have been decluttering for years and expect to continue for many more.

I have always decluttered because 1) We don't use the stuff, 2) We don't need the stuff, 3) we don't have room for the stuff we don't use or need. Those are excellent reasons to declutter. But there is more.

There is choice.

As I cleaned the house and decluttered things during the January Cure, I realised that I am a minimalist only because my house imposes it on me. I have two coats--not because I only want two coats or because I can only afford two coats--but because my closet is so small--two coats is all that will fit --given the other three people in my house and their coats!

I have the kitchen gadgets I have--because that's all I have room for.

That's not really choosing. That's accommodating.

So, I thought, if I am going to choose minimalism, or the simple life, or whatever, then I need to make a space where I don't have it. I need to choose space--over display, over storage, over "usefulness."

Books from the shelves above were re-located to my library landing--and using the Kon-Marie method,  I weeded out these books to make room for them.

I'm on my way.

Does This Bring Me Joy?

You know, I laughed at the question.

I mean, you know, yeah, well, it is a great question, but I don't really trust my emotions all that much. What brings me joy today may not tomorrow. And worse? Something may not bring me joy right now--but it just might down the road.

But, I am struggling with this whole minimalism thing as I do the Cure and declutter the house simultaneously.

Does this bring me joy?
This bookcase I agonized over decluttering just last week?

Well, actually, yes it does. Now that I have lived with it and styled it a bit, it made me smile just last night.

Does this bring me joy?

It used to. I was a happy lady the day I brought these old books of mine from my University days out of storage and placed them on the shelves.

Now, they tower over my head as I sit at the computer hour after hour, day after day, and they just seem to be collecting dust.

They don't really bring me all that much joy anymore.

I do love to decorate. I love pretty things. I love well designed things. I love making compositions and displays. I love playing with texture and colour and form.

But have I done that here? Is this the place to even do that?

I want the biggest damn painting/print/canvas of water I can find. Or clouds.

Like this:

Taken in southern Alberta in the summer of 2010

It could look something like this:

Don't laugh. I haven't figured out photoshop, yet. This was done in Word. Yes, it's a scanned in word document.

It's an engineering print*--and it can be printed out 2 x 3 feet or 3 x 4. (The one above approximates 2 x 3). I could either put the print up with tape (the image is actually just printed on standard paper) or I could mount it on a board painted black (to simulate a frame, as here), remove all the shelves the top and bottom and prop it on the bottom shelf. 

Maybe. What do you think?

*engineering prints can only be done in black and white and they cost less than $10.00. Apparently, the quality is not the greatest, either.

From the Weekend: Scenes from The Living Room Cure

 I wonder who the maid was who realised this thing would put her out of work? (I confess, I am writing up this post right after watching Downton Abbey.)

 I used it to vacuum the sofa--both with the slip cover on and with it off. I used it to vacuum the wood floor and the rug (twice). I used it to pick up some spilled soil off of the coffee table (I need to get a better potting mix for the cacti). I even used it to vacuum the chair and all the pillows.

That white slipcover is an absolute bear to get back on the sofa. I had to leave off the cover I usually place on top of the slip cover because it has a large tear. We are having an incredibly long warm spell and the dog has taken to digging in the puddling snow and mud. I've washed the seat cover twice in three days. I have to do it again. And I need to get that cover--an old hotel tablecloth--mended asap.

( The sofa is rather blinding without its navy blanket. The blankets were in the wash when I took these.)

I discovered another use for a microfibre cloth--the TV. Slightly damp, it cleans up the TV screen beautifully. It's also a great duster--and with a little glass cleaner the perfect thing to clean the windows and with a little Murphy's oil, a great cleaner for the wood.

I spot cleaned the carpet with good old fashioned vinegar and hot water.

I did the whole room piecemeal, over several days as I had to work throughout the weekend. But a little bit every day gets a lot done, even though there's no great whiz bang of effort--nor of satisfaction, at that.

Jerry Says It All

 Yes. This.

The Linen Closet

I have been wanting to get to this dratted closet for a while, now. It is upstairs in the hallway between our bedroom and my daughter's. It holds our bed linens, stuff for the powder room (also on this floor) and travel bags.

The problem with the closet is not the closet.

The problem with the closet is that the light in the hallway does not work. We keep the bathroom light on in order to make our way up the stairs, but as you can imagine, trying to access the closet after 5pm can be pretty hit or miss. (We need to call an electrician but we're being ostriches about it as we know the house is not up to code and we're afraid of what the bogeyman might say.)

So it's a mess.

I've also been wanting to tackle this as part of my homework in the decluttering module with Joshua Becker, as part of Courtney Carver's year long course called "A Simple Year."

My first step was to determine just what all I wanted to keep in here. I won't bore you with the details, especially as nothing really changed.

The next thing I did was to figure out the number and kind of linens I wanted to keep.

Here's the breakdown:

In this family of four, my husband and I share a queen sized bed, the kids each have a twin.

For pillows we have:
Ben --1 queen, 1 standard
Emma --1 standard
Chris and I: 1 pair of Euro pillows, 1 pair of queen, 1 pair of standard pillows. (Well, that's the goal. Currently, we have one queen and on standard in addition to our Euros.)

So, if each bed is supposed to have (at least) two sets of everything, though Cheryl Mendelson wisely advises three, here's what we should keep:

Pillow Protectors:
6 queen
8 standard

Pillow Cases:
2 pairs Euro (4)
2 pairs Queen (4)
2 non-matched Queen (for a total of 6 Queen)
2 pairs standard (4)
4 unmatched standard

Sheet Sets (Top flat and fitted bottom):
2 sets Queen
4 sets Twin
PLUS 1 set of flannel sheets for each twin bed.

Mattress Pads:
2 Queen
3 or 4 Twin. (I can get away with three if I don't change the kids' mattress pads on the same day.)

Whew. Got all that?

You notice I left out comforters, duvets, duvet covers, and blankets. That's because I'm just not ready to deal with all of that just yet.  Some of them are on the top shelf.

Professional organizers recommend that you have everything--from all over the house--before you start. So, I folded some sheets waiting in the laundry room, started a load of laundry, and collected a few things I had in storage down in the laundry room.

Later, I found another sheet set in my son's room--clean but covered in dust. I must have given them to him and told him to change his bed a while back.

The pillowcases and protectors.

Here are all the grocery bags I fished out of all the hidey holes in the closet.

 Isn't that ridiculous? There are only two garbage baskets which take them. I decided that I would toss half of them and then sew up a grocery bag holder and put it on the door of the closet to hold the rest.

Several hours later, we have....

Ta Da!

The Donation pile.

I can take them to women's shelters, Ronald MacDonald House, Homeless shelters, Compassion Houses, basically, any charity which has beds. Severely used or torn sheets are better suited to animal shelters for bedding.

And so, here we are, all loaded up again. I was just racing against the light at this point.

I decided to put Queen sized stuff on the top and the twin stuff on the bottom. The stuff in the middle is all bathroom related, since there's no closed storage in there.

(Yep, I kept waaaay more than my allotted 6 queen pillow cases! They're vital to surviving the zombie apocalypse. I'm just sayin')


Ironically, I have a shopping list. In spite of having a ton of bed linens, I am actually short in a few categories. I'm ready for a white sale.

Comings and Goings

today's sunrise. 

Assignment #14.

Create a Landing Strip.

The idea, of course, is to have a place near your exits and entrances for all the stuff that finds its way into your home, no matter who brings it in.

This is a multi-faceted problem. Let's take this systematically.

The Front Door.

Who uses it?

Myself and the kids.

What comes in? (What do you need a place for?)

1) Boots and shoes

2) Coats, Jackets (Personal items like scarves, hats and gloves are stored in the coat pocket and/or sleeve.)

3) Papers my son delivers once a week

4) mail

5) my purse and my daughter's backpack


What goes out?

6) outgoing mail

7) library books to be returned

8) things to be returned to various people

What do we need to store? 

1-8

What have we got?

A narrow hallway right by the front door and around a corner,  a wider hallway with a coat closet. Let's take it in turn.

By the front door we have the carpet for boots, the small wooden child's chair for all sorts of things (currently holding my son's papers. When I am getting ready to leave for work in the morning I put my purse and lunch kit on it. Sometimes, it is a place to put my purse down so I can get my boots off.) The child's chair is in the entrance arch to the living room. Across from it is the doorway to the dining room/home office.

That shelf is mostly decorative, but it does hold outgoing mail at the moment. The bin underneath it holds some library books and a bag of borrowed items to be returned to its owner.



Around the corner is really where the hard work happens.

yes, the two hallways are different colours. That will likely be changed during the Spring One Room Challenge in April.

That dresser (and the calendar above) is command central. School papers which need signing go into my folders--and then get returned to the kids' folders. (Well, that supposed to be how it works. In my son's case, he tends to give them to me right when he comes home from school and immediately retunrs them to his back pack. My daughter wakes me up the morning they are due and frantically waves a pen in my face. We're working on it.) My husband and I also have our own folders. I highly recommend that everyone in a household have a place like this for their own papers.

We collect grocery and gas receipts (separate from our other receipts) so there are envelopes to catch them set up here, too.


One drawer in this dresser is devoted to hats, mitts and scarves, year round. I go through and purge it in the fall. (This way, too, if I do find the odd hat or glove lying around, I have a place to put it without having to find its owner or her coat.)

The coat closet also doubles as a broom closet, so I have all sorts of things here. Most importantly, it is the home for our coats, bags we use to take to the grocery store, bags we re-use, empty backpacks and my purse.

The Back Door.

This is the way to the back yard and the garage.

Who uses it?

Mostly my husband, the dog, sometimes me and the kids.

What comes in?

My husband and his workboots (which he likes to change out of before he goes out to play with the dog), his lunch bag and book bag. Groceries. dirty, filthy dogs paws.

What goes out?

All of the above, plus, in summer, sports stuff.

What do we need to store?

In addition to the above, I need access to gardening supplies, (gloves, a hat, secateurs, and a trowel), a table cloth and roasting forks.

What do we have to work with?

A teeny tiny entry way, and stairs going up to the kitchen and down to the basement.

The shoe pocket organizer holds mostly mosquito repellant and odd bits at the moment. The drawer underneath holds things we won't need until summer.

First, the stairs leading up to the kitchen.

On the left wall, a strip of wood with cup hooks holding keys and the dog's leash. On the right, a towel bar with the long shoe horn and a rag both for the dog's paws and my husband's boots. On the ledge, the spray bottle is to discourage the Beagle's barking. (On the floor to the left is a bucket with cleaning cloths to be taken to the basement laundry room.) Those are my husband's work boots and winter boots/shoes on the stairs.

As you go down the stairs there's boot shelf with a curtain rod above it on the right.

Those sandals are being held up by a bent hanger, the boots by a hanger clip. Sandals and keds live in the pink magazine holders. Beneath the shelf are hooks for bike helmets and a bag holding fishing gear.

Opposite this are the baskets, also suspended from the flooring joists.

They hold hats, summer work gloves, ball mitts and rollar blades and knee pads. They've held all sorts of sports equipment through the years.

(That mess underneath the baskets belongs to the epic basement clean up project which is next month!)

As far as curing goes, I dusted the navy shelf, cleaned off the top of the white dresser, and sorted through the paper work. I decluttered the baskets at the back door, vacummed the magazine/shoe holders and the wire baskets. Then I washed the walls and swept and washed the stairs. I vacuumed the hallway and the coat closet floor, too. Yep. I'm tired.

So, there we have it. I think I've covered how we --and all our stuff-- come and go.

Any questions? I'll answer in the comments.