Todo List Dec 12

First and foremost, a quick tribute to my daughter’s uncle who passed away last month after a very long battle with a brain tumor. He would have been 34 today. Happy Birthday Ricky.

Oh my where to start today? So much I want to attack. I suppose starting out in the kitchen is the natural way to do things…

• Edited to add: Went through my iVillage message board bookmarks, all 60+ of them and purged the ones I really don’t have time to read. Really do I need to bookmard EVERYTHING I have the slightess interest in? – I’m now down to 9!!
• Empty dishwasher
• Make myself some tea
• Eat breakfast

And then I got hit with another stupid headache and scratch everything else on my list 😦 How disappointing… I told hubby and Bean to let me sleep the headache away… I woke up four hours later. No headache but still pressure. Gaw! I wish I had a blood pressure machine at home!

My sister needs help tonight and will be coming over. So my todo list is changing drastically!

• Make dinner
• Clear the hallway
• Vaccuum hallway
• Vaccuum stairs
• Move the bed and shelf out of the spare room
• Move everything I don’t want in the spare room into the corner
• Vaccuum
• Set up the room how I want it
• Set up the bed

And this is where my sister called to tell me she wasn’t coming over… Ah well, I was productive – that’s all that matters!

• Encourage Bean to clean the bathroom
• Get the garbage ready for tonight

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And once all of the kids have left for school, I’ll

• Rescue the front hall

Bean decided not to go to school again today (I have to figure out what she’s avoiding) but she was excited to tell me that she wants to attack the laundry pile today. Hey – why not! hahahaa So I suppose this means I should

• fold laundry

Edited to add: I totally forgot about a birthday party I promised to attend this afternoon. So the list below will probably be delayed until tomorrow…

She’ll have to clean her bathroom as well. I have to tackle my bedroom as well. So as soon as hubby rolls out of bed,

• Clear off the desk
• Bring boxes in the livingroom
• Put laundry away
• Clear off the floor
• Bring the desk in the basement
• Vaccuum
• Make bed (new sheets)
• Clear off bedside tables
• Bring lamps into the livingroom

If I’m going to tackle the room, the hallway needs to be done as well.

• Clear out hallway (again)
• Vaccuum

And if all goes well, we can bring one of the TVs up here! 🙂 Yeah! Set it up with the xbox and finally have access to movies from my bedroom again!!

I also need to

• Set the bed up in the spare room
• Go through kitchen box
• And set the garbage ready for tomorrow

Have a great day everyone!

Success…

This morning, when the boys arrived, they removed their jackets and….

 

HUNG THEM UP IN THE CLOSET!

I didn’t ask them to, I didn’t even hint. I thought for sure they would just place them on the hooks I have available but nope. In the closet.

I was impressed.

So this just goes to show that I don’t have to be a nagging monster, I just have to provide the right environment. It’s up to me!

Thinking of a reward…

I’ve been thinking that once I’m all done with decluttering, I would hire someone to come clean every crook and crany in this place. That would be a great relief.

But then I thought it would be fun and rewarding if a few friends came down and all pitched in.

Soooo not sure what I’m going to do!

So very productive…

and so very excited about it!!

Yesterday I posted my weekend todo list. Although I didn’t clean as much as I wanted to on the main floor, we did enough to feel accomplished.

It’s a shame that my family comes over and just sees ‘the big mess’. They don’t see progress. And I can’t blame them. When I stand in the middle of any room in this house, I myself feel overwhelmed.

When we picked up my daughter’s new bed yesterday (thank you Freecycle), the owner asked us if we wanted a widescreen rear-projector TV. LOL That’s two new tvs in two days. Ah why not…

ARGH – I said yes because I know my cousin is going to take one but I see how easy it is for me to clutter my house like this. This second TV is bigger and better than the first one so I would have said yes regardless. I have to keep track of how much YES I say compared to NOs.

Today our plan was to work on our bedroom so we can put the new TV in there but alas, we didn’t get to it. We’ve talked about it, planned it, and we know exactly how we are going to tackle this together, we just haven’t gotten to it yet! The way we are moving, I suspect it will be done in the next couple of days tho.

I also wanted to tackle the main floor which I did but not in its entirety. Here are some pictures of what we did accomplish 🙂

Before – remember this mess?

Pre-blog mayhem

mayhem part 2

I had cleared it off enough to be “presentable” while I entertained potential buyers for my shelves.

Clearing the mayhem...

As clean as it looks, it didn’t stay like this long. I didn’t take a before picture today because I had forgotten about the above pic… I did clear it off…

Today, it looks like

Carseat is going back in the car and the stairs have been cleared!

The only thing left here is to clear that shelf 🙂

Today

Hubby helped me remove the closet doors. I honestly feel that they contributed to the mess because they were very difficult to open/close so no one wanted to use the closet. What you don’t see is the huge mess that was in there. But now we have personal baskets at the top and enough shelving for shoes. Just this space alone makes the whole house a little less overwhelming! And that is awesome! One more thing scratched off my Small Project List.

We also did another donation run. Not as big as last time but bye-bye tube TV, speakers, side table & a full box of junk.

Last but certainly not least, drum roll please…

Still has a lot on the counter that I would like to clear but it's a start!!!

Compared to

Oh My!

I remember deciding not to have our microwave on the counter so we wouldn’t lose that space… Bwouhahahahahahahaaaaa So we’re trying it. I won’t get rid of the unit until I know for sure I want to keep the microwave here.

Again…

Pre-blog

And today…

My daughter will read this and pipe up that I cheated… the big pile of junk that was once housed on the counter is now in a box to go through. However, a lot of it went in the garbage AND my container cupboard is nicely organized again. The plan is to go through that box tomorrow while I’m watching my movie!

I’m still proud of what we did accomplish. Tomorrow is a new day!

Busy Weekend Plans

This weekend is going to be a very busy one!

Saturday

• Yoga
• Pick up a new TV… hahaha yes another one because someone is giving us one!
• Pick up another bed
• Make lazagna
• Celebrate my niece’s 10th birthday 🙂

Sunday

Hubby has asked that we start in our bedroom. ABSOLUTELY! I can’t wait to get this room under control. And I honestly don’t think it’s going to take us that long. I would also love to rescue the main floor. There’s a lot of ‘piles’ to go so if we can do a donations run, that would be sweet! The rest will be easy to tame!

However we do have boxes piled in the livingroom. These boxes are filled with …. – yep, you’re guess is as good as mine. As I clean rooms and find things I really don’t know what to do with, I throw it in one of these boxes. Most I’m sure will end up in the garbage or donation pile once they are sorted. My plan is to put a movie on some day and attack!

And somewhere, sometime, I have to find some time to go Christmas shopping! There’s only 2 weeks left!!!! I’m sure this will be done throughout the weekdays ahead.

MIA Recap

Boy it’s been over a week since I’ve updated this blog – 10 days to be exact. When I first started writing Muddle Mayhem, I feared that I would ‘fall off the wagon’ and neglect to post. However since I have such a huge reward in the way, I thought HA that’s impossible. Keep your eyes on the goal and you can’t go wrong.

So what happened?

My last post was a picture analysis without the picture. My phone has completely stopped working and I was unable to upload the image. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday ended up being lazy days. Didn’t do much worth mentioning but not because I ‘fell off the wagon’. I would describe it more like needing a break and taking some time to relax – and heal. Another of my friends who was pregnant, full term, lost her baby. His heart simply stopped beating. Needless to say, this got me down. Another baby given angel wings…

While I took it easy throughout those three days, I was able to observe my family’s habits and patterns. It is so easy for us to pile our junk on top of other things. It is very easy for us to walk over mayhem on the floor. It’s not a matter of getting upset and asking everyone to pitch in. We all have to learn to see the messes and it has to start with me.

It’s too easy for me to get upset with my hubby and children. I even told Minime this week that I feel very disrespected when I feel an effort isn’t being put forth from everyone. But then I want to take my words back because I am the one that taught them all to live this way.

Saturday was my usual busy day (including a 3 hour nap) but we did pick up a new bed from Freecycle.

Although I had a lot of cleaning plans for Sunday, I had no energy to do anything. By the evening, a headache had hit… Monday, Tuesday = Migraine, Wednesday, Thursday = Recovery headache.

Ugh I hate these headaches. They really knock my whole system out of whack. I did visit the doctor on Monday because lately all of these headaches are on the left side of my head and my right arm goes numb. Yeah doesn’t sound good! Found out it can be blood pressure related 😦

Today is Friday. Although it wasn’t very productive, I feel much better. The girls and I cleaned the kitchen together and then we all pitched in to make homemade spaghetti sauce since I’m making lazagna for my niece’s birthday tomorrow.

My house might not have seen a lot of progress this week in means of decluttering, organizing and cleaning but there has been a lot of growth in my children. A little less arguing, a little more understanding and while I was down for the count, they had to work together to make dinner 🙂 Everything turns out well in the end!