De-Cluttering and Shredding....an Update

Jillian's 30-Day Shred is kicking my BUTT! It's been a week and I've done the Level One workout every day except Saturday.

The result? Down 7 pounds :)

I'm not one who likes to exercise but I've forced myself to do it and once I start I follow through to the end. It's only 20 minutes, after all, and I'm definitely seeing a difference in my endurance. I think I'll be ready to try Level Two in another week or so!

I *almost* want to be disappointed in myself for not working out on Saturday but I spent ALL DAY cleaning and de-cluttering around the house. I cleaned out the closet in the bathroom, the linen closet, the Master Bath vanity and the walk-in closet along with sorting through both my clothes and Iz's to donate. Hubby barely had enough room for all the trash when he went to the dump Sunday!!!

It was SO nice to finally go through my clothes and get rid of stuff I will never wear. Why I insist on holding on to things is beyond me but it's a habit I am desperately trying to break. In the few days since I've cleaned I've made a HUGE effort to maintain all the hard work I did and make progress in little areas.

Baby steps.....

Progress

Baby steps....that's what I'm taking....baby steps.

The hardest part about de-cluttering is realizing that it's not going to get done in a day. All this stuff didn't come into this house in a day. The closets/drawers/cubbies/cabinets/shelves did not accumulate mountains of useless stuff in a day.

So, I can't expect it to all go away in a day. But....I'm making progress.

Hubby had today off for the holiday so I was able to go grocery shopping ALONE :) I also stopped at Wallyworld for a couple non-food things and I got a good deal on a couple organizational items. For the coat closet in our living room (which is packed with stuff and unable to hold any coats!) I got an over-the-door shoe organizer and a set of small totes for the shelf....I got another over-the-door shoe thing for the closet in the master bedroom to store things like belts, bandannas, and other odds and ends since we don't use dressers. The best part? The organization stuff was on CLEARANCE! My favorite!

I took about an hour tonight (while watching The Bachelor) and cleaned out the drawers in the living room. The bottom two are Iz's and hold coloring books, crayons, stickers and craft stuff. The top one is mine and holds odds and ends. They tend to be a catch-all so I cleaned everything out, organized and actually managed to make enough room in the top drawer to hold all of Iz's hair stuff so it isn't floating around the house driving me mad!

Tomorrow's task....Coat Closet!!! I'm DETERMINED to be able to actually hang coats in it!!!!

"FLY"ing By the Seat of My Pants

So...I want to de-clutter this house.
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We're one week into February and my progress has not been good, but I have made some baby steps. I purged magazines the other day and also clean out one of the junk drawers in the kitchen.
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Not a lot, but progress IS progress.
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Today I checked out a website that Laurie recommended - FlyLady - and fell in love with her tips and tricks and motivations to get your house/self/life in order and be able to just enjoy day-to-day instead of stressing or constantly worrying about all the little things. I signed up for her emails and spent about an hour this morning poking around the site. Now, I could have easily spent that hour de-clutter, but....nah! Poking around online is MUCH more fun!
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We'll see how well I "fly" in the coming weeks :)
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New Years Resolutions!

I've heard on a couple news shows and read in a couple magazines that most people have abandoned their New Year's Resolutions by the 1st of February (or sooner!) so I decided that I wouldn't make any resolutions UNTIL the 1st of February...pretty clever, huh?
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Actually I don't really make "resolutions" but I do have a couple things I want to change this year...a couple goals I want to achieve....a couple improvements to our life that I want to work on achieving.
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I'd like to de-clutter this house, get back to working out regularly and use less processed foods.
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I'm going to work on these goals all at once but, for blog purposes, I'll focus on one at a time. This month's focus is on the clutter around this house. Every day I want to find a box of stuff, a pile, a drawer or a nook and clean it out. I'm going to sort things to be sold, donated or tossed out - if I don't have a place for something, I need to get rid of it!
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Um, yeah....I'll keep you posted on how that goes :)
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