oh the clutter

As so many stay at home moms know, the more you are home, the more mess you make. I tell ya, I could clean this place fifty times a day, but there is always more. I love staying at home with Alli and never want it any other way, but sometimes in the dead of winter, 5 and half months pregnant, it can get to you. It's a job where everyday you have to do the same thing. Somethings you have to do only once or twice a week, some every day, and a whole lot you should be doing more often than you should. If you let it go, it's still got to be done the next day. There is a co-worker who comes and goes, but you can't always count on him to do what you ask. I won't go into any more detail, you get the idea.

So back to my thought, I keep a rather clean house. It's rarely spotless, but almost always clean before bed. Lately, I am just not feeling the clean like I want to. I figured out what it is. CLUTTER! I hate clutter, but I have waaaaay to much of it. I was flipping through a book at Costco today about home organization trying to pick up a few quick tips. It had some good points, but here was the shocker. I saw the heading about junk drawers and immediately flipped to it, hoping to find some magical solution to keep the junk drawer under control. Well, it said no junk drawer allowed...NO JUNK DRAWER? Does anybody not have a junk drawer? I was shocked.

I came home to find I have a junk drawer, a junk spot on the corner of the kitchen counter, 4 junk drawers of the computer desk, and pretty much the whole desk in Alli's room is a really badly organized junk "drawer". So I got started. I did ok. I still have a junk drawer and a junk spot on the counter, and more organized computer desk drawers, but I didn't even touch the other desk. However, everything has less stuff everywhere, and I feel little cleaner.

And I did the magazine rack. That's easy. We have way to many subscriptions right now. 5 or 6 I think. I have no problem throwing away Sports Illustrated (even though when Derek came home and saw the pile a minute ago, he was picking through trying to keep some-with no luck on his part.) and even my exercise magazines (they are really all the same, but it's nice to get a motivational reminder every month.) But for some reason, I feel like I have to keep the Parents magazine, because there is always really good stuff in them, but for older ages. So someone tell me to throw them away or that they kept theirs and were really glad they did.

On that note, I think everyone who comments this time should share a good declutter tip. My tip is going to be...Make a plan. If you try and do it all in one day, you won't do as good a job. (Like me today) Plan to declutter one room every two weeks, by doing a little bit everyday or every other day. There is my tip, now I better write it down, and make a plan. But I'll wait for everybody's tips to come in first.
One more thing on this topic. This was the title of one of the other books at Costco, "Being Organized Is Not A Personality Trait. It's A Skill Anybody Can Learn." I'm gonna have to check that book out next time, what a good title.

And here is Alli while I was cleaning up supper, she pulled all the throw aways off the table, and was having a great time. She loves to rip up magazines. It was actually great. I got the kitchen all cleaned up with no interruptions...maybe I should keep them...haha



We took Alli to this little petting zoo in West Ed the other day. There were little goats and pigs and sheep and more stinky animals. Our friends have a dog that Alli really likes, so we thought she would have fun. She walked around having a good time looking at all the animals, but did not want to touch any, which was fine by me, because it is kinda disgusting. My camera was being weird again. But I charged the batteries yesterday and now it's working back to normal, I hope that was all that was wrong.