Saturday, March 8, 2008

Dejunk, Organize, Deep Clean, Routine

The title of this blog is a list of my new goals (along with a slew of other post-New Year goals I'm dragging behind me). Let me try to explain. For lack of a better term, I am a restless soul. Some people are easily content, me, I struggle a bit more. I find a constant need for new projects. Never mind whether or not my schedule's plenty full already. I guess that's just how I am and always have been. I'm also a perfectionist by nature so my need to accomplish things often conflicts with my desire to have things "just right". I'm much more chill and mellow than I used to be, but I am a little nutty.

My restlessness came back again a few weeks ago. Sometimes I can't quite put my finger on it and am ready to make drastic changes. This time I was convinced it had to do with my family room. I'm in desperate need of a room makeover, but seeing as how that is not in the budget this year, I decided I would try to rearrange the furniture (yet again) and see if that helped. Let me mention briefly that this drives Marcos crazy! He's learned to more or less accept this endearing part of me, but it still bothers him (usually because it means I need his help to move the heavy furniture). After the rearrangement of the room, I felt better for a brief moment and then my restlessness was back again.

I blame a big part of my current restlessness on the dreaded office in the basement that I've been putting off forever. I get around to portions of it, but it's a project that is always missing something so I end up just shutting the basement door - out of sight, out of mind. Here's the problem...we're buying a new computer and going to have my brother-in-law help us build a desk and some shelves in the basement bedroom. But, I've decided to start a small business so all of that has been put on hold. For those of you who now think I'm crazy, let me explain. I do little projects and contract work here and there and figured the best thing to do was to just have my own business so it was easier to track everything. So now the computer and desk will be part of the business. I've put off moving the computer downstairs until we get the new computer and I've put off buying the new computer until the desk is built and until I get the business license stuff all figured out, and I've put off measuring the desk and shelf stuff until I can get down there and decide how much space I really need and get rid of some things I don't... Well, you get the picture.

Now back to today. So mid-afternoon I was looking for a pen in the kitchen. As I was looking around trying to find one, I couldn't even open the so-called "junk" drawer. Next thing you know, I am removing everything item by item. I am honestly amazed by how many things actually fit in one tiny drawer. That now empty drawer lead to my emptying the next drawer, reorganizing medicine, throwing out old medicine, organizing one shelf of the pantry, cleaning off the crap on the top of the fridge, deciding not to keep 10 phone books so I could free up some shelf space, wiping down shelves in the fridge and rearranging condiments.... I'm not sure where I left off, but it was a really good start to something that will probably take me quite awhile.

For those of you who may not know me very well, I actually do keep my house fairly tidy and organized. Unfortunately my organizational upkeep was lacking a bit. I now have a need to reorganize many things that have been put off again and again. My hope is that I can work on one area a week until I'm caught up. I'm going to try to get rid of stuff we do not need, organize the things I do want to keep, and make sure everything has a place. Of course all that organizing inevitably leads to deep cleaning the rooms I am working on so my other goal is to deep clean the areas that have been put off way too long. And last but not least, I need to get into a better routine. The kids have a good routine for eating and sleeping, but I need to be a little bit better about planned music time, story time, play time, cleaning time, etc. Hmm...what an ambitious little moment. Hopefully I can catch up on things before I realize what a big undertaking this truly is.

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