A New Year and I'm on a Roll

Yes, I am missing my Washington family, and this picture of the New Year in Seattle is a definite "Wish I Was There" moment! The fireworks in the picture represent the energy I feel as I begin this new year, 2013! My wish to all my readers is that you enjoy good health and find contentment in the days and months to come. Be kind to others, but as importantly, be kind to yourself.


It is a new year, and I am ready to gear up for my yearly home maintenance at Organized Home's New Year Grand Plan Challenge. I am highly motivated thanks to the eighteen weeks of focus offered by House & Holiday Plan based on CEO (Cynthia Townley Ewer)'s book Houseworks. I have used this plan for the past couple of years, and when they say practice makes perfect, I feel that I was much better equipped to keep up this time around and had a very calm and enjoyable holiday season including hosting/co-hosting two large and a few small family or friend get-togethers. I have also spent the last week of 2012 on a challenge to get the house Clean By 2013. With the help of my Twisters (Twitter Sisters) I entered the new year with a clean slate; literally clean floors, drawers and more.

I have been doing some form of the Grand Plan for a couple of decades now. It was originally developed by a fellow SHE, Katie Leckey, on the SHE message boards in the days when computer networking was message boards and list serves. The plan was a sequel to her Holiday Grand Plan. The SHE boards were my life line a few decades back, just as my FLYfriends and Twisters (Twitter sisters) are today. 

So I started reflecting yesterday during a reorganization of my storage closet, where I store tubs of Christmas decor and other seasonal items, as to why I have so much more energy to get things done and follow through with my routines. I didn't make any resolutions this year, nor did I set any new goals. I think that having made neither might be a first for me. Tweeting with my online community is a big part of why I feel motivated. They have really inspired me on good days and shared challenges on bad days. I have also built the habit of focusing on one area to improve on each week and also continue maintaining my routines (well the basic ones anyway), and have done a much better job delegating the things that I just hate doing. I still am responsible for toilets being swished and swiped, as everyone here seems to hate that routine. Of course I now do it without thinking about it. Amazing how a mindset can change over time.

So I am rolling on, and the nice thing about momentum is that it takes a lot to stop me once I start rolling. I just need to make sure that I don't get off the track of what I want in life. My goals that I set for myself in the past are still in full force today. I guess that is a benefit of gaining years of experience in getting and staying organized, attempting to live life to the fullest, and remembering that people are far more important than any things can ever be. Getting control of my home was the first step for me in gaining control of my life, or at least making sure I control what I have the power to do for myself, my family, friends and neighbors. I still have moments, or even days, from time to time when I feel stressed, off-beat or simply in need of a swift kick in the tush. I also have times when I get side-tracked. I did tell you I was a SHE, right? The important thing is that I just look towards living better and being the person that can deal with whatever comes my way.

I challenge you to reevaluate or choose your goals and pick a plan, be it following FLYLady's focus areas or jumping in for The New Year Grand Plan Challenge. Find an online or real-life network of fellow SHE's to share your ups and downs and that will help keep you accountable, inspired and encouraged. If you are not sure where to start, you can do a Twitter search; #FLYLady, or on Facebook "like" FLYLady or Organized Home to begin a search for a network. 

What plan do you use to Get Organized? Where do you get your support and inspiration? Having these as a part of my life has made all the difference in helping me to become more organized.

365 Out

I am not into making resolutions for the new year, but I am all for setting goals for myself. As this year started up, I was floundering at getting some focus in my life. I seem to have the normal routines down, but being a working SHE, I feel that I need a bit more going in my "stuff" filled life. I need a guideline to keep me engaged in the quest for more peace.

So I thought about setting some expectations for myself. I thought about doing a daily fling, but that is more of a short term solution, and often is a task that goes by the wayside in the world of the work week. I had also read about the minimalist that challenged others to reduce their belongings to just 100 things. Well, that may have been possible if I only had me to worry about, but it still had me wondering if I am still way to thing heavy. So I came up with a couple of guidelines for the year that hopefully will not be too tough to accomplish, and that I will be able to follow through with over the course of the year.

First, nothing new into my space without losing two things in the same general area (could be the physical area where the new item is going or just from the general area of my life).

Then, over the next twelve months I will lose 365 additional items.

AS FLYLady says, "You can't organize clutter." And my favorite CEO (Cynthia Ewer, Organized) in Houseworks and Organized Home, the one-in, one-out rule and going on a no-buy diet are good ways to keep clutter from coming back into your life once you get it under control. So since I think I still have too many things in my life, and I know the reality that I won't completey curb obtaining new things, this new commitment seems to be the answer for me. Baby-stepping all the way to less "stuff" in my life. 

I have steadily, year by year, reduced the amount of stuff that I possess. I have slimmed down from closets and a shed stuffed with boxes and tubs of things that really were in the way with day to day living. Even so, I am really going to get serious about getting down to a lot less stuff. I don't think I will ever get to the point where I own just 100 things, but I do want to have the things that I need or love close at hand. The rest has just got to go.

As with most goals, the beginning seems to be going smoothly. Christmas gifts came in during the last week of the year, so I gave myself a jump start getting rid of  several no longer loved things 

*Kindle and two new books in, six books out---nice thing is that new Kindle books will not be clutter in my house

*Kindle cover in, two more books out---okay, I know the Kindle cover actually is an accessory, but since it won't always be on the Kindle I need to make some more room

*Travel mug, giant cocoa mug, soft throw, penlight key chain, stationary and memo pad with magnet on back in, 6 more books out (what can I say? I was on a roll with the book declutter)

*Blu-ray player in, DVD player and a no longer watched DVD out

*Necklace tree in, an unloved candle from my dresser and a broken necklace out- not sure why I was saving the necklace, since it can't be fixed but it was a favorite

*New bottle of perfume in, empty bottle out as soon as I finished with the last drops, along with passing along a small tube of scented lotion that was sitting on my dresser, unused for way too long 

Last week I went shopping and bought a new 6 quart crock pot as I needed to replace the 16 year old model, a 5-quart that had questionable temperature on low with one broken handle. I think limiting myself to getting rid of the old crock pot and an old cookie sheet (now too dark for baking cookies) was hard to do. My kitchen is in a very full state at the moment and I will enjoy lightening that load as time goes by, but it's not the time to do more just yet.

I will say that shopping is becoming a new kind of experience for me. Contemplating that I will have to get rid of two items in order to bring something new in is making me think twice. So unless it is something that I need to replace or something that I really have planned on getting for some time, I am sure I will just skip the shopping altogether.

Mail in, twice the magazines out. I haven't been counting the junk that went straight to the recycling.

I still need to focus on the 365 additional things out...so far six home improvement idea magazines are out...that leaves 359 more things to go. I can so do this.

Christmas in July! Er, August?

Organized Christmas Rudolph Club

Every Summer on July 25th, my year-round Christmas on-line group the Rudolph Club has an assignment to choose a holiday plan for the year. There are many to choose from these days. And since I so enjoy kicking back over my holiday break, sipping eggnog and playing games with my family, I like having all the planning and preparations finished and my house squeaky clean down to the inside of closets and cabinets well before the big week arrives. I have had a few bad years, especially my first years as a wife and mother, and I would not have even considered starting to get ready until the weeks just before Christmas arrived. That created several very stressed out, over-spent and ill-prepared years that made me crabby when I should have been enjoying my family and friends.

The holiday plan that I have been doing for nearly two decades, with slight diversions to try something new from time to time, is Katie Leckey's (and the Get O list serve group's) Holiday Grand Plan. It starts in late August and gives a system of deep cleaning the house from top to bottom, or end to end, room by room, from late summer until the late fall/early winter celebrations begin. You also get a system of holiday preparation tasks to make sure you are calm and sane when the weeks of celebration begin.

Cynthia Townley Ewer of Organized Home and Organized Christmas has had a Christmas Countdown plan around since 1998, that basically focuses on getting the holiday tasks completed over a six week stretch. I have done this a few years, usually when I was so disorganized that the Holiday Grand Plan had got started before I was ready to commit, and CEO's Christmas Countdown saved me (and my family).

Cynthia's newest version of Houseworks

This year I am ready for year two of the Housework's Holiday Plan, also created by Organized Home's CEO (Cynthia Ewer, Organized) that is part a Houseworks book club and part a tweaking of the Holiday Grand Plan that focuses more on areas of living rather than room by room cleaning. It went very well for me last year. This year I am teaching nearly until Christmas Eve, so I can't wait until Christmas Break arrives to get it all together. So I am starting this week, today in fact, with planning, dusting off my holiday planner and getting my home office area in ship shape as a beginning to a stress free autumn/holiday season.

For those that are not ready to start a holiday plan just yet, but want a plan that will help them Cruise Through the Holidays, FLYLady Marla Cilley's plan will begin in a month or so, and can help you to babystep your way through. I have many FLYFriends that have used this stress-free plan and had very nice results over the holidays.

So let the Houseworks Holiday Plan begin...and remember there are only 117 days left until Christmas. And as Cynthia likes to ask, "Will you be ready?"

Be Very Afraid!!! It's My Closet

I have a good Twister and FlyFriend, Diane from Denmark, who has been facing things she has been putting off for one reason or another, but ultimately needed to give herself a dose of courage to begin. She has been working past her excuses, trying out things that are new or tackling tasks that have been on her to do list for far too long. She calls these Scaredy Cat Challenges. Then she blogs about them. Thank you, Di, for the inspiration to challenge myself.

In rising to the challenge, my goal is to follow Unclutter Your Life in One Week. Day one, Monday, asks me to focus first where I begin different parts of my day; my personal closet in the morning, my desk when I arrive at work and the entryway when I return home. Closets are the places where things can be stowed away, unseen by anyone passing through the room. Why am I so reluctant to deal with these spaces? Why the fear? My personal walk-in is large for a closet, and holds far more than what I need in a simpler life. And scarier still is the fact that my home has many closets. I had them built into the design as I have lived in several homes without adequate closets. In hindsight, I did omit a couple of important closets in our current home, an entry closet for coats and backpacks and a linen closet for the boys bath and linens. In my personal closet I have clothes that fit from all seasons, clothes that fit well just two years ago (and now do not *insert heavy sigh*), shoes, coats and jackets, an iron and ironing board, mending tools, gift bags/boxes and many items that are my personal belongings that just don't have another home. This closet has thirty square feet of floor space with ten feet of hanger spaces and above that 10 square feet of shelving. Joe has his own, identical closet, that seems mostly empty, and his also contains his dresser and most of his personal items. My dresser, in my bedroom, has drawers that contain more clothing and the very large bottom drawer stores my collection of purses and bags. How do I find the courage to take on the "Monday" challenge? Knowing I can conquer anything for 15 minutes at a time.

Where did I start? Being a follower of FLYLady, I had a difficult time taking everything out. The rule is you should never take out more than you can deal with and return in an hour or less time. But I had a different plan to follow and was determined to complete the task. First a sorting of the clothes. They were all laid out on my bed. Everything. Every piece of clothing that I have was laid out. Nothing left in the laundry or seasonal storage box. All was being considered. The sort resulted in about two-thirds of my clothes going out the door. Some, my mother reminded me, I have had for far too long. 

After the sort I returned the items I wanted to be keepers to the closet. Most of these are now sorted by type of clothing and then by color and are hanging on colored plastic hangers. All that remain can be worn this season, fit and have actually been worn in the past year. My work clothes, following the same guideline, are also hanging there ready for mid-August to arrive. Only 3 things are on the floor; a line of shoes, an ironing board and a bag of gift wrapping items. I am looking for something that will work for my closet to get the shoes off the floor, and my shoes are down to where I can live with the "one pair in/one pair out" rule. I have two pairs that could use replacements, but I need to find the perfect fit and style before they can be trashed. I should also be searching for a hanger to put the ironing board on the wall and off the floor and hang up the bag of gift wrapping and then the floor will have nothing on it. On one of the shelves above the clothes-hanger bars I have one large Space Bag that I’m using to store clothes that are out of season. Also on the shelf there are jeans and shorts folded neatly in a pile, although the jeans very well could end up on a hanger since I don't have an overabundance of clothes in there now. The other shelf stores my iron and mending tools, a couple of hats and a few other personal possessions that live best in their long time home in my closet.  

For those things that were in the closet and were not clothes, they either were trashed, passed on or found more appropriate places in my home. There was a large bag of clothing that was trashed and a large box and bag of clothing that was loaded into my van and taken to the donation drop-off dock.

The next stop in getting uncluttered was my desk at work. I really can't set it up right now, as the items and tools that normally sit on the top of my desk in my office and the desk in my classroom are packed up, but I did prep everything so that I can come back in early August and just pop everything out as Unclutter Your Life in One Week, Day One outlines. I will revisit that part again when I am ready to set up my desk, but for now getting everything ready to flow helps. I look very organized with my desks completely cleared. During any given school day though, it can seem a bit of a mess. I have also considered buying a product called WonderFile Portable Workstation, but I haven't found any reviews from people that have actually purchased one, so I am yet wary of making the purchase.  It is a desk area that folds up to a portable size. I think that would really work for me, as I carry my work home almost daily, and spend more time than I like reorganizing things as they move from school to home to the school desk again. I'll keep researching this, including keeping my eye out at the As Seen on TV stores, as a television commercial is where I first saw the product (watching the History Channel).

I have already established the habit of clearing my desk before I leave work every day, having the things I need set out and ready for the next school day makes a very smooth start to my day. It is also nice to be prepared in case I have a substitute the following day, as no one can know when illnesses are eminent or when something is going to come up and I end up dealing with a student situation or have an unscheduled meeting first thing in the morning.

I spent my work day in early June getting the supply cabinets in my classroom organized and even labeled. I still have a couple of file cabinets with paperwork and plans, etc. that need to be organized, but after two years in my present classroom and five years at my present school, I finally feel that all that I have are the resources that I actually use and not a lot of extra materials from my predecessors. My paperwork files need some work this summer anyway as my class structure is going to change drastically in the coming year. I will need updated assignment lists, activity materials and assessments, but I am spending at least a day each week this summer to work on getting ready to gear up.

The last area of the "Monday", day one, assignments in Unclutter Your Life is the entryway. It is the area I first see when I walk into my home when I return after work, and is the last of my firsts. For this house our entryway is the “back porch”, which is essentially a mud/utility room. This is where shoes are removed upon entering and put on again before leaving. It also has a washer and dryer with flat surfaces that have proven to be real hotspots for items that belong either out the door or inside the house somewhere. I have a functional shoe rack and a chair for people to sit on as they take their shoes on or off as they come and go. There are three doorways that take up a large part of the wall space and need to stay clear. One door leads out to the outside patio area, another leads to the kitchen and the last is a doorway only (as we removed the door) that leads to my pantry. When you walk into my home you can see the porch and pantry, so they both really need to stay clutter free. Kids frequently leave multiple pairs of shoes, boots, flip flops, etc. in the floor and not neatly on the rack. The rack was overfilled as each of the family members has multiple pairs of shoes that they believe should live on that rack, and several pairs of shoes were really trash as they had been replaced. There was even a pair of shoes that had been on the rack since my last clean out and still no one claimed them. Out they went. My shoes are stored in my closet unless they are dripping wet, muddy or covered with grass cuttings. I clean them off and return them to my closet  regularly. I try to encourage the rest of the family to put the shoes they don’t wear frequently in their own closets, but it doesn’t always work.

I do not use the porch as our launch pad as the book suggests. I already have a system that works for me. My launch pad is next to my desk, a place where I keep my purse and workbag. Keys always stay in a pocket of my purse. There is a place for my laptop and cell phone to charge and my iPod to sync and charge when needed. It is close to where I work on projects and plan or prep for work, make grocery lists, catch up on personal or work e-mails, and just about anything else that may need to be added to things that come and go from my home. The boys have their own launch pad, locker that we keep at the end of the hallway near their bedrooms. This is where they keep anything that does not belong to them (i.e. library or school materials), and things they take out the door including backpacks, coats or jackets. a drawer for hats and gloves, and there is a space for visiting cousins to stow their belongings when they come for a sleepover.
 
So I am now on a search for an attractive shelf with hooks or pegs to hang in the back porch above the shoe rack and a more sophisticated piece of furniture to use as a launch pad to replace the locker the boys are using now. Also on my list is a nice shoe holder and a hanger for the ironing board/iron in my closet. It would be nice if the portable desktop turns out to be legitimate as well. I guess I have some shopping in my future.

A Soothing Sunday

I really like to look at Sunday as the beginning of my week. What happens today usually sets the tone for how things go for the rest of the week. An ideal Sunday includes a combination of renewing my spirit and getting prepared for the rest of the week. Sometimes my efforts are a big flop all the way around, and sometimes I start my week prepared and mentally refreshed. Days of being able to actually renew myself have been pretty lean this past autumn. I am hoping to improve that this year by keeping ahead and delegating as much as I can. I think today was a success as I seem to be refreshed and prepared. I hope the rest of the week follows suit.

I need to spend some time this week reflecting on my basic plan for the week. I need to get it where it works for me. I usually do my Weekly Home Blessing (see FLYLady for how it works) on Sundays. And I think that it works for me. I am home and have the block of time, and usually can get someone to give some assistance. It is also the day that I plan what I am going to wear each day (if it is a work week)  But I think I am trying to do too much on the weekends (like lesson planning and meal planning and bill paying) and really need to focus on using an hour each day just to get targeted stuff done. Maybe if my energy level stays up, I will be able to make the plan I should be using more effective. I'll keep thinking about it as this week plays itself out.

I am happy to report another success with moving somehow for yet another day. I did a 40 minute Interval workout using my personal trainer Jonathan Roche's NEWO system. I used the music from Podrunner Intervals (available for free to download on iTunes). I have also added to my Sunday to-do list planning my workouts for the week as Jonathan suggests. I plan to do one workout each day this week. I am feeling stronger than I did last week. It is nice to be making positive changes and not just sitting around wishing that I would.

I am doing some reading to work on my happiness goal. I have been reading F. LaGard Smith's The Daily Bible since the first of the year. It is compiled in chronological order, and I have read it through three different times in the past decade or so.With all the time I've had off from work lately, it has not been difficult to keep up. I have read the Bible through many other times, but I have also stalled out on the book of Genesis while beginning to read through the Bible more times than I can count. I have several other books, four actually, I have yet to start that are sitting on my desk ready to be read. Three of them were written by favorite authors. I have a couple of books I would like to read for the Literature class that I teach as well that should be fun. light reads. And I have also been online, with all of this time on my hands, looking at several books, and I am working on a wish list that should have me reading good novels well into the summer months.

Ahhh, Sunday. The beginning of what I have decided will be a wonderful week, whatever comes my way.

I Resolve to Have a Happy New Year!!!

Life is a journey and I have learned to make resolutions that move me in the direction I want to go. I know that every year I can grow and become wiser through all of the experiences I have, books I read, people I meet and choices I make. Sometimes I lose focus in one part of my life and gain ground in another. That's just how life works. My New Year's resolutions are pretty simple. I want to become happier and healthier this year and to continue on my journey to get connected to people and more organized overall.

To be happier I will work to build a closer relationship to God by spending more time in His word and His will. I will spend less time with things and working away from home, and more time enjoying the very special people in my life. I also plan to pursue the hobbies and activities I enjoy. I am choosing to stay positive in both thought and deed in every situation and decision this year.

To get healthier I will follow the advice of my personal trainer, Jonathan Roche. I have been following the NEWO (No Excuses Workout) plan for a couple of years, and last summer had built myself up to the point where I was running intervals for 45 minutes to an hour three or four days a week and doing NEWOs three days a week. I'm still here with new motivation, and I'm ready for the new challenges he's bringing to me this year.

To connect to people I will continue to plan family days every couple of weeks, invite family and friends to our home regularly and be open to invitations to join others. I also hope to travel to Washington state this summer to visit the growing family I have there. I will continue blogging and updating my status on Twitter and Facebook, and join in chats to keep up with those I don't see often. I am awful with writing letters

To be better organized I will continue my daily routines and work on focus areas every week with friend FLYLady on my shoulder. This year I'll develop weekly meal plans and add monthly freezer cooking sessions with the help of Leanne Ely saving dinner in my meal planner/recipe binder. (Click here to read more about my organization journey.)

For each of my goals, I will set baby steps to help me on my way. And as I work for each of the small goals, I will remember to be kind to myself. I guess my resolution is to keep on keeping on, but in a much more positive way. And if I don't feel happy with my life at any given moment, to at least be content in all things. I want to remind myself that the many blessings I have been given are ample.

The new year has arrived and a fresh start has been laid out with the drop of a ball and the blast of fireworks. Thank you for reading my blog and letting me share my resolutions. Whatever positive goals you have decided to focus on and meet, I am hoping you have the most wonderful year in 2010! I plan to do the same.

Looking in the Rear View Mirror

As the end of the year approaches, I am already planning a brand-new, fresh start for the year to come. As a teacher I really get two "New Year's Days". One in August as the school year starts with new faces and routines, and one as the next calendar turns to its first page. Both are used as a renewal in all parts of my life, although I often have higher hopes than reality allows.

So today I am spending some time looking over my shoulder to reflect on the successes and positive changes I have made over the last year. I am much more organized here at home than in years past, thanks to FlyLady and the support of my Twisters. My closets are in good order with clean clothes in season and very little clutter stashed, I shop and cook from a menu more often than not and I feel in control of my day most of the time. Having daily routines means we have a home that is comfortable for my family and ready to invite guests over regularly. Having a menu and shopping list means that I can delegate the shopping and/or the cooking too. That is definitely motivation for me.

I am also drawn now to see what goals fell by the wayside, or parts of my life that were neglected or ignored over the past year. I was really doing well with fitness in the middle of June. I cannot remember what it was that got me away from eating right and exercising regularly, but I know that by the time August rolled around, I was out of the keeping healthy loop. That is a habit that fell away, but I need to make it a goal to get back to moving five or six days a week. The part of my life that has really been neglected this year is my spiritual self. Since truth comes by hearing, and hearing comes from the word of God, I feel I need to recommit to reading God's word on a regular basis. The rest of my life will fall into place when I get His Spirit back into my life every day.

My job has been very challenging over the past year and a half, but feels especially so this school year. I do know the feeling began when I became team leader for my teaching group, and many responsibilities that I used to share with other teachers have fallen completely to me. I had all new teachers on my team last year, so I think last year's challenges are understandable. This year we only had one new teacher, but the situation has really not improved. I want to be able to walk away from work with it "finished" at the end of the day. Instead, I work until 5 or 5:30 each day, go home and after the boys are in bed I do at least another hour of tasks. In the end I am not finished and need time during the weekend to catch up. My boss has told me that if I find I have a problem, I can't complain about it unless I have a possible solution. So I have proposed passing on the team leader status to two of my more experienced teammates. They can each do the extra tasks for a quarter of the school year, and I will just do my portion of the tasks. Whew. I feel better already. Now I just need to try to work on streamlining more of what I do and become more efficient with my time at school. I want to be done at 4 p.m. every day, or at least most days. Now how do I do that?

Whatever I end up resolving, I need to remember to enjoy life and the people in it. Then I need to toss that rear view mirror aside and focus on the ride ahead.

Holiday Chaos? Not This Year!

CEO's Christmas Countdown is ready to begin in just two days. Has it really been ten years? Yikes! I have been following the program for many years. I didn't jump in the first year or two she had it up on the message board, but I did join the mailing list as soon as she made it available. I was at first following Katie Leckey's Holiday Grand Plan from the Holiday Grand Plan List Serve group. Over the years I have enjoyed CEO's tasks, reminders, links to articles and of course the recipes. I still have printed copies of these in my Christmas Countdown Holiday Organizer. CEO, aka Cynthia Townley Ewer, the author of Houseworks and the editor of the website Organized Christmas, also developed a Houseworks Holiday Plan, that I have been successfully using for a couple of years. I have been enjoying the Holiday Tips on the Organized Christmas site this year since the beginning of September when this year's Houseworks Holiday Plan began.

Flylady has also helped me through my organizational challenges in years past with the Holiday Cruising Missions on her list and The Holiday Control Journal.

This year, with the experiences I have had with the different programs for over a decade, I am going to use the Houseworks Holiday Plan to keep the house in order and the Christmas Countdown site to keep my holiday preparations on track and finished before the last minute. I will still do any of the FLYLady missions that help simplify my life (her missions started Monday), but I am sticking to CEO's plan. Do you hear the commitment in my tone.

Why am I so adamant about this promise some two months before Christmas is even here? I know that I don't want to be wrapping gifts at 2 a.m. on Christmas morning. I have spent years with shopping only on the few days before Christmas and being frazzled and short tempered because I tried to do a lot in a little time. I have also enjoyed years with a plan with everything wrapped days before Christmas, shopping finished weeks before Christmas, evenings spent enjoying sitting in front of a fire with the family and even planning for guests coming to my house through each of the holiday meals and a party for my mother's side of the family one day and another party for my husband's many siblings and their families another day, and all went well. The difference between working the plan or not is CHAOS or relaxed sanity. I prefer the latter.

Time for Me to FLY

For those of you who are not familiar with FLYLady, FLY is and acronym for Finally Loving Yourself. One thing that I have learned over the years is that in order to find true contentment in life you really have to love yourself. I don't mean that you are to be conceited. What I am talking about is doing what you need to do to take care of you. Pray, eat well, sleep well, and keep a positive line of thought going at all times. That way when things come up that are challenging, tedious or that you just have to deal with...you will be able. You have to be at a point where you can see your purpose and live it.

I find that when I do not take care of myself, physically or spiritually, there is no way that I can be truly content. I walk through the day out of balance, cynical, and in many ways simply lost. To get back into balance I must invest the time to refocus. I can only do one thing at a time well. I must remember that my well being has to be intact before I can do anything outside of myself. Once I regain the balance, I am on a roll and can be a loving wife and a good friend at the drop of a hat, nurture my children as every mother should and do service for many as needs arise. There is no question about who I am or why I exist. When I FLY I am free to soar toward Heaven. And in my flight I am never alone.

Call me

a slob, a SHE, a messie. There are many names for my condition. I consider myself a recovering clutterholic. With my family, a busy life and a full house, I have a lot of stuff that moves into my life.

About 24 years ago, while I was a new mother, wife and homemaker, I came face to face with the truth that I don't like to live in a mess. I was under the cleaning impression that when it gets dirty, you clean it. So I would jump from area to area trying to clean up as things got undone or cluttered. I did not have a routine of any kind, although I already had lists. The problem with lists was that I would write down what I thought I needed to do, would deal with things on the list, but would get sidetracked over and over again. I often would have three or four cleaning or organizing projects going at once. Sometimes I would not get something onto the list until it was really in need of help. Having a young child and my own home often felt overwhelming. I also played ball, read a lot and worked on all kinds of craft projects. That just added to my challenges. When said son was about ten months old I came across a book called The Sided Tracked Home Executive; From Pigpen to Paradise. The authors call themselves the Slob Sisters and they coined the SHE (Sidetracked Home Executives) label.

I read the book and, after a quick trip to Wal-Mart, started my new filing system of index cards that very week. It was winter and by the following autumn I was often getting side tracked from my file box. I had gone back to work and found even more to do with less time now to get it done. I would get the box in order once a week and by the end of the week would have fallen behind. Again I would shuffle my cards and lose my place as I would go to work and come home and deal with an active toddler. I started to see that in order to get things done, I would have to get a mind set on what I needed to do at home when leaving work, so by the following spring I started carrying the day's cards in a vinyl envelope in my purse. Each evening, I would file the finished (and sometimes unfinished) cards back into the box and then pull out the cards for the following day. I fell off the wagon a few times, misplaced my portable envelope a few times, but overall this seemed to work for me. I would save the big jobs for days I had off work, and tried to work around other plans that would come up. There were many days I would refile cards that were undone, but I kept plugging along. I know without that system, I would have really been without direction.

Fast forward ten years. I was now the mother of three and both working full time and taking a full load of classes working on finishing my requirements for a teaching degree. Again I was struggling with my cards as my time to devote to my home had dwindled. I had already added many more cards to my box. Ones that were needed to keep my kids feed, wearing clean clothes, and to school on time with what they needed. Other cards were added that included things I needed to do for school. I was still pulling cards from the box each evening and had developed the ideas of putting a punch hole in the corner of each card. I would clip a metal ring through the punch holes of the day's cards. I tried to have them in the order they needed to be done. There were just too many of them. I used my cards throughout the day to keep me focused.

Just a year before, I had gone to a special workshop offered by my college counselor's office that was called "Getting It All Done". After hearing my situation, the counselor that was giving the workshop advised me to either quit school, quit work, or quit sleeping. The latter was her biggest recommendation. She bragged about sleeping only four or five nights a week for two or three hours a night when she had gone to school. I left that workshop frustrated since I really couldn't give up any of these. I had to work, I needed to go to school and I couldn't do either, let alone take care of my kids, if I didn't get some sleep. I would stay up into the wee hours when I had a paper or project due, which was often enough. Those were still the days when a typewriter was my only tool at home, and so if I made any errors, I needed to catch it before it rolled off the bar of the typewriter, or it would have to be completely redone. There was no spell check, and my editors were my older sister and a friend at work. The reality was I was not getting everything done.

It was at this point in my life that I discovered that the Slob Sisters, Pam Young and Peggy Jones, had written a new book, Get Your Act Together: A 7 Day Get-Organized Program for the Overworked, Overbooked, and Overwhelmed. Again, my sanity was saved. I was introduced to the idea of routines. Instead of having one card for each to-do, which for me was rather tedious and sometimes got me sidetracked between related jobs, I now had a card with a group of tasks that were done at the same time. This is also the time that I started organizing photos into shoe boxes, started keeping items close to where they were used and keeping like items in one place, and got serious about making my kids a part of the plan(thanks Pam and Peggy). In the next couple of years, my job changed, I was out of school as a student, and I bought my first home computer. I got on-line as soon as it was possible in my area, and started visiting message boards that were meeting places for SHE's. This is where I came across three other very influential people in my organized life.

The first I found on the SHE boards and later by joining a group that dealt with The 21 Essays. The on-line group would work through one of the 21 essays each week. Cynthia Townley Ewer is the author of the essays. CEO, as Cynthia is known to me, developed a step by step method to getting the SHE card system going and members would go through the process twice each year and make changes and fine tune our card systems as the situations in our lives changed. It also provided a support group to share successes and challenges. CEO went on to develop some of my favorite websites. Organized Home, Organized Christmas and Organized Scrapbooks. She also has a site Sew Organized, but I don't check in there as that is not a challenge in my life. I recommend it to anyone that does sew or quilt. She also wrote the book House Works, definitely a read for any fellow SHE. I love our CEO. I used to have a printed copy of the Essays, but they have since been passed on. I can read them on the files of my SHE list, and I do from time to time.

On the SHE boards that Pam and Peggy had set up on their site, I ran across a great fellow member, Marla Cilley, better known as FLYLady. She had shared her routines on pages of the message board. When FLYLady started her own group, I joined as a FLYbaby as I was then in graduate school and expecting my fourth child. I was also working full-time teaching. My index cards soon developed into lists of routines that I kept in my planner (CEO helped me with starting to use a planner). I think I am a FLYkid now as it has been eight years of FLYing for me. She also has a wonderful website and a team on her list that helps people learn to FLY (Finally Love Yourself) and get out of CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome-I think that this is a Pam and Peggy term). Marla has written a book and co-written another with Leanne Ely, Sink Reflections and Body Clutter. Both are good reads.

The last of the great influences that developed from being a part of the SHE message boards was the Holiday Grand Plan, that was developed and written by Katie Leckey and later shared as part of CEO's website. There have been others that have fine tuned the idea, including CEO herself with the Christmas Countdown, which is an abbreviated version focusing on Holiday preparation. I love the idea of spending months before Christmas making the season a great family experience without stress.

I now belong to a group that works on home clutter challenges (much like Katie Leckey's Cleaning Grand Plan), a local FLYbaby group (I love my drill team), and a group that works on a plan to prepare for Christmas (much like Holiday Grand Plan, but tweaked of course to suit the group) that starts up in late summer and runs until mid-January. I have a couple of other groups that I just visit and contribute to occasionally, but I can only do so much.

I hope you have enjoyed the story of my journey so far. I am still working to get better organized and tweak the system I use to keep me that way.