Kitchen Cabinets......UGH!

When I was off to go to the dentist on Thursday, I had some time before my appointment, so not being one to sleep late or lay around I started cleaning out my disgusting kitchen cabinets. I really wonder how two people who aren't home all day long can create the mess that Irv and I create in our home. What is with us? We toss crap on the kitchen table rather than sort through it or just put it away. We shove things in drawers and throw things in the cabinets. Oh how I wish we were tidier.

So, I pulled everything out of the food cabinet and decided to put the dishes in the food cabinet and the food in the dish cabinet....chuckling all the while....because Irv HATES change!

I can't even begin to tell you how much he hates it. The tiniest little wrinkle in the norm can throw him into a fit of frustration.....in a funny way of course....sort of.

Then I moved the aluminum foil and baggies and freezer bags into the dish towel drawer and the dish towels into the foil and baggie drawer. The rest of the cabinets I just emptied, wiped out and put back in order.

I couldn't get over our little spice cabinet. How on earth do I accumulate so many little containers of spices when I don't even cook? I think I find a recipe, buy the stuff, cook it once and then never again. I had spices in there that had expired in 2006 and 2007!

It definitely looks better now!

When I got home from the dentist, I quickly finished up what I had started before the numbness in my mouth wore off. Once it did, I didn't really give a crap what the cabinets looked like.

Friday morning when I woke up long before the alarm....I knew there was no way I would be working. I slept in.....until 6:00 a.m. and then decided that the only way I would get through a long day with a throbbing mouth, head and face was to do something. I would work on the cabinets a bit, ice my face a bit, rest a bit and so on throughout the morning. By noon, my energy was sapped and I ended up doing very little else.

So, are the cans in your cabinet in alphabetical order?

Destination Simplicity

Geez...remember my big dejunking plan? Well, I haven't dejunked anything since that first week! HAHA! My "plan" was to spend a little time each week sorting, donating and tossing. I did get quite a bit done that first week, but I didn't put a dent in the 37 years of accumulation in this house! To be honest with you, I just got side-tracked and forgot I was doing that. Duh!

I think I am going to slap some brightly colored post it notes in some obvious places to remind me to get my "rear in gear"....like on my forehead. :)

Even if I just took one drawer a day, or one shelf a day or even one cabinet a day....I know I could get it done by summer......of 2015 maybe!

Maybe I will decide what drawer, shelf, cabinet or closet I am going to tackle and post a "before" picture on the sidebar of my blog. Then I can take an "after" picture when I am done and post that. Heaven knows I'm on my blog enough....so when the same "before" picture has been up there for a month....you will know, and I will know that I got side-tracked once again!

So wish me luck as I embark on my dejunking journey....as I try to reach my destination called Simplicity.

It's Tax Time

Oh joy! See this mess.....this is the exact reason I am trying to get more organized this year. I refuse to do this again. I already have my new checking account with debit cards for me and Irv so all of my business expenses will be in one place. Well, they were in one place this year...

See that nice blue book that says Monthly Bookkeeping on the front. I bought that book in January of 2009. I bought it so I could keep a nice record of my spending for my business.

See the blank pages? Yep! I never entered a single thing!

Well, my expenses were all in one place though. The receipts were shoved in between the pages of the nice blue book. No, not in the proper month....all just shoved in there so I wouldn't lose them!

So now I get to sit and sort all of the receipts into little piles for Joann's, Hancock Fabrics, Hobby Lobby, Menards, the resale shops and the Post Office. Then I get to sit and tally it all up. Once I have the totals, I will put it all on a spreadsheet of sorts and it will go to our tax guy with our personal tax stuff. Then we sit and wait for the news.

Why am I in such a hurry to do my taxes? Because IF we get any money back...that determines IF we get to go on vacation this summer....and I love vacation and I want to know ASAP if we get to go so I can start planning.

Last year we were out shopping when our tax guy called. He said, "Well, you are going on vacation." I asked, "Are we going to Hawaii, Colorado or Wisconsin?" He said, "Colorado," and that was just fine with me!

Organizing

I am pretty darn pleased with myself right now. A few of the things that I really wanted to get done, are done. Now, all I have to do is follow through with my plan and all will be well in my world!

Here is my little work out calendar. Notice how I only wrote down one week worth of exercise? That is just in case I am being a bit over-zealous and my plan needs tweaking after week one. I am really worried about finding this much time for working out and walking, but we shall see.

Next, I took a planner that we got in the mail with something and I turned it into my meal planner. I recorded what I plan to have for dinner next week. It's all written in pencil because I know that one of those nights Irv will make a yummy frozen pizza and then I will have to move things around. The neat thing with this is that I can write things in ahead of time if I think of something I want to make for the following week and then I can use that to help me make my shopping list for that week. I can also jot other things we need in the little note section.

Last is the shoe box with my envelopes for our new budget....they are just waiting for payday on Friday and then we will get started. We get paid every other week, so I have envelopes for week one and for week two....for things like food, gas, dog food and spending...the things that we normally use a debit card for, but won't be anymore, therefore keeping us from overspending. At least that is the plan!

It feels good to have some plans in place. I am anxious to get started. The first test will be when we go grocery shopping this morning. This will be our dress rehearsal. I am anxious to see how we do. My goal is to only spend about $120 today, so we have money left for carry out on the weekend. :)

Subject change....I listed my cute new little Sun, Moon and Stars tote bag yesterday and popped it on Facebook. My sister in SC saw it and immediately bought it! I finished this one yesterday and I will get it listed some time today. I hope it sells as fast! I love the little plastic "buckle" thingy. I thought it was such a fun thing to use to keep the top of the tote closed.

Well, we are off to the store. I'll let you know how we do. Make it an awesome day for yourself!

Clean Up Time

Well, it is the New Year and that means it's clean up time. We took down the tree and decorations and cleaned up that mess. Then we moved some dressers and shelves around to give me more room in my workshop to store things and then we cleaned up that mess. Then I decided to tackle my file drawers....that was a very BIG mess to clean up. See, I never removed the stuff from 2008, then had no room for 2009 and just stacked that wherever I could find room. Then I dug into my very old, very slow running computer and cleaned that out too! From there I went into the kitchen and cleaned out some cans and boxes that were way past their "safe to eat" date and tossed those. Next I uploaded a bunch of stuff in my camera to clean that out too!

I didn't photograph any of the clean up, but I can show you some pictures that were in my camera.

Here is a silly little primrose that has somehow managed to survive since last spring in my office at work. This is what he looked like after my six days off.

I gave him a big drink of water and here is what he looked like the next day. He just doesn't quit! He is such an inspiration. :)

We were sitting in the drive through at Starbucks on Thursday morning and I took this rather blurry picture of the icicles on the building next door. There are icicles everywhere right now because of our fluctuating temperatures. If I can, I will try to take some other ones to show you. Some of them are pretty amazing...including the ones hanging off my own roof!

This is Michael and Bernadette's Australian Shepherd, Teagan. Isn't she beautiful?

Whenever we see her, she gets so excited that she smiles just the biggest toothy grin you would ever want to see. I have tried so many times to get a picture of her smiling, but while she is smiling she is also jumping and wiggling and wagging her entire back half and the pictures never turn out. This is what I got while trying on Thursday.

I just love this! I can't wait to show this one to Michael and Bernadette! She looks like she's meditating! Hmmmmmmm.....

Here is my newest tote bag. I will be listing it today. I just loved this fabric. The lining looks blue in the picture, but it's really purple. I would love to keep this one, but I already kept one and I have a rule about that. NO KEEPING THE MERCHANDISE!!

Today I will be making a couple more totes for FourDogDay. If my clock parts come, I will be finishing three little desk clocks I made.

I will also be taking inventory of everything in our cabinets and freezer and making our menu for the week based on what we already have. We start our new budget plan on Friday when we get paid, and I want to see if we can stay under $150 a week at the grocery store. I am only allowing $150 a week for food and household items AND our weekend carryout. If we want carryout....we have to spend very wisely. I know we can do it.

Well, that is about it for today. Make it an awesome day today!

The Dejunking Has Begun!!

The clean out has begun. After our tree cutting trip yesterday, Irv headed for the garage. In our garage is quite a collection of.....junk! A little bit of this and a little bit of that, saved over many, many years and before you know it, you have no room for a car. So, Irv worked in the garage yesterday afternoon and made great progress.

I opened the drawers to my file cabinet and peeked inside. It's the small two-drawer type, but it was so jam packed with stuff from previous years that I had not disposed of that I haven't been able to file anything for months. Instead it got shoved on the shelf above my computer. One file at a time....I went through and saved what needed to be saved and tossed what needed to be tossed. Some could be recycled and some needed to be shredded. I got through the top drawer. Today I will do the bottom drawer and then go through all of the stuff I haven't filed yet. UGH!

I also plan to hit my closet and the closet in our spare bedroom. I have so many clothes in those two closets that I haven't worn in years....and it is going...straight to the resale shop in town! Once those things are done I will be feel so much "lighter"! Then I can just start going through things here and there and donating or tossing.

It is going to feel SOOOO good!!

Minimalism

.....a style or technique (as in music, literature or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity.... so says Webster.

Now that is definitely not me, but it is what I am hoping to start practicing...not in a business context, but from a personal standpoint. I don't think this is exactly how the word is meant to be used, but I like the sound of it.

I tend to be a keeper, a saver, a collector, a pack rat....whatever you want to call it. I hate to throw things away or give things away if there is even the slightest chance that I might regret it even ten years down the road. "Darn it! Why did I give that fondue pot away? We could have used that!"This photo is from a website that is all about getting rid of clutter. I might check it out to get some helpful hints.

This fall and winter, my goal is to start unloading. I've done dejunking before, but never to the extent that I want to and need to. When you have lived in the same house for 37 years....you tend to have a lot of stuff. I said once that we needed to pretend that we were moving, because that was the only way we would ever dig ourselves out from under all of the crap we have amassed over the years.

My new feeling is this....cluttered house.....cluttered head. I know I don't want a cluttered head, therefore, I can't have a cluttered house. When you live in a 1000 square foot house, almost anything you set down becomes clutter. It's just the way it is.

My son and his wife hate clutter and their house looks so awesome. They only have what they need. Now, don't get me wrong, they have darn nice things...but they don't have "stuff" anywhere....just their nice things. I will never get to where they are, because I will always like "stuff" and I am me and I like me.....but I would like to "lean" toward that concept a bit more.

This will be one of those overwhelming tasks where I have to tackle it one room at a time, but eventually it will get done. I made some good progress this past year in my workshop. So, wish me luck as I start my project next week. I figure while we are painting and decorating, this would be a great time for it. I'll let you know occasionally how it's going.

So.....are you the pack rat?