Tag Archives: organization

A Big Cleaning Week (or An Excuse to Organize)

Posted on September 13, 2019 | Comments Off on A Big Cleaning Week (or An Excuse to Organize)

I hate that so many things in my life were affected by election season, but it really did take over my life. I’m finally feeling like things are normal again for me, but I’m still dealing with what happened when I let other things in my life slide because I didn’t have the time or energy to deal with them.

When things aren’t normal, it’s stressful in so many ways. But one way that I was stressed was by the lack of cleaning I had done in my house. While I’m not the cleanest person I know, I still do daily cleaning and try to do weekly deep cleaning. I thought with having a small house that it wouldn’t be as hard to clean, but I feel like having a small house actually can make things worse. Dirt and dust seem to appear so quickly, but that’s probably because there’s less surface area for them to land on. And clutter is definitely a problem with a small house. I try my best to limit what I bring into my house, but last month things just started to pile up.

I was avoiding doing the cleaning I needed to for a little while. I want to claim that I needed some downtime to recover before getting back to things, but honestly, it was just being lazy. But this week, I had to get my act in gear. First, the messiness was starting to really bother me and I could feel that I wasn’t in the best headspace. But also, my parents are in town now and I want to have a clean house for them. I’m sure my parents wouldn’t mind if my house was a little messy, but I don’t like having it that way. And it’s not as clean as I would like it to be, but it’s significantly better than it was before.

Besides doing all the cleaning, I had to get my house back in order. I’m still working on the organization part, but I was able to get a lot done this week. And in that organization, I started to get rid of things. There are so many things I was holding on to for no good reason that I just needed to toss or add to a donation pile. I know that most of those things had some sentimental reason at one point, but it’s been so long that they are now meaningless junk. And there is no reason to keep them in my house and taking up the limited space I have. Maybe if I was in a bigger house, I’d find a way to keep them. But it’s probably better that I have a little space so I am forced into a more minimalistic lifestyle.

I did try to work on the cleaning and organizing a little bit each day for the beginning of the week. I didn’t want to get overwhelmed in the middle of working on it and making things more of a mess. I actually managed to figure out a good schedule because I never felt like I was trying to do too much. In fact, many days I actually felt motivated to do a bit more than I planned to do. It helped to make things go by and I was able to do almost everything I wanted to do with organizing and getting rid of things.

I still have a few more organizing projects that I want to work on, but I didn’t worry about them this week. They can wait and things don’t look too messy while they aren’t done. But I do want to get more of my house feeling as put together as the main spaces do. It’s been a huge relief to feel like things are clean and nice looking and I want to make even more of my house feel like that. Those extra projects require purchasing some things to help me and I haven’t found the perfect things to use yet. For example, I need new drawer organizers and I haven’t found a set I like. The ones I am using are cheap ones I got and I realized that while they worked I never loved them. I kept them until they started to fall apart (about 4 years) so it’s time to find a replacement that I want to have. But since there’s no urgency to get that done, I can take the time to find the perfect thing instead of spending money on something I don’t really like.

Even though I’m not totally done with my organizing, I got a huge chunk of it done and I feel so accomplished. And hopefully, I’m able to keep things up and not let my house get back to how it was just a week ago.

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I’ve Been Slacking (or I Need An Easy Challenge This Month)

Posted on July 2, 2019 | Comments Off on I’ve Been Slacking (or I Need An Easy Challenge This Month)

I think it’s clear that I’m not exactly as enthusiastic about my monthly challenges as I was when I started. It’s been harder to find challenges to do and I’ve been failing at them more often. I think it’s because I have done so many of these, but I should be able to find something that motivates me again. But right now, that’s not happening.

Last month, I wanted to work on digital organizing to maximize what I could do with my various tech devices. I picked this challenge because it seemed easy enough and it was something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I know that I don’t use my phone or iPad as much as I could and I wanted to see what new things I could do that would make my life so much better. I was excited to see what would happen.

And then I didn’t really do it at all. I did a little bit of organizing when I downloaded a few new apps. I made sure I put them in the folders I wanted them in and when I was looking in those folders I did delete some old apps. But the goal was to do so much more than that and I just didn’t do it.

I did have some things last month that made it tough on me. I had a lot of work I had to do and it took more time than expected. When I thought I might be able to do some of the organizing between customers at work, I had to use that time for other work. I’m not upset about that because work does take priority. But I guess I just thought I would have the time and when I didn’t I wondered what happened. The days were flying by and I couldn’t believe how little free time I had.

But even though I didn’t do the organizing that I was planning on doing, I did use my iPad more than I have in the recent past. I have been trying to use it more often to do some work-related things when I don’t have to be sitting at my computer. And that is more often than I thought in the past.

Because of my lack of enthusiasm for these challenges and how lost I have felt a bit with getting them done, I wanted to make things easier on me by using a challenge that I technically already have been doing.

For July, I wanted to make sure I am following the Brain Over Binge online course every day. I’m in the 3rd week of the course and I have struggled to keep up a bit because of the time issues I’ve been having. But I want to devote this month to catching up on what I missed and making sure I do the lessons every day as they come out. I want to also work on some of the extra work that can be done with the course that I haven’t been doing.

I know that this is a bit of a cheat for my monthly challenge, but because I have already fallen a bit behind I don’t want to add something else to my plate. I want to give myself the ability to focus on this because it is important to me. I don’t know if it will work to help get me into recovery, but I won’t know if it will unless I try and follow the class. So that’s exactly what I plan to do this month.

The class does go until August, so I will be doing this challenge beyond July. But I want to have the good habits built up this month so the last 2 weeks of the class are easy to complete. I know that if I put my focus on this, I will be able to catch up and get all the work done. And being able to accomplish that will mean so much to me so I want to put a lot of effort into it.

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My Monthly Challenge To Finish Out The First Half Of The Year (or Sleeping And More Organizing)

Posted on June 4, 2019 | 2 comments

It’s crazy to think that after this month the year will be half over! I’ve said it dozens of times (and will say it probably thousands more), but time is just going so fast! I do love that I have so many checkins with myself to not let time slip by. I have things that I do to check in every week and every month and it does help me stay more mindful as time goes by. And one of those checkins is my monthly challenge.

Last month, I had a challenge to work on my sleep a bit more. I have finally gotten to a place where I don’t struggle to get up in the morning. Even when I can sleep in on a Sunday, I still usually wake up at 7am since that is the time I get up every other day. But because I naturally get up early, if I stay up late it means I just won’t get the sleep I need. And I had been noticing that I was going to sleep later and later even on the nights I needed to be up early. So I wanted to work on my better bedtime routine so I could be closer to getting all the sleep I needed most nights.

There were still a few nights that I know I was up too late and I did suffer for it. But I am in a better place now with being used to going to bed a bit earlier now than I was before I started the challenge. I did think about it more when I wanted to watch another show before going to sleep and I would often decide it wasn’t worth staying up. I still have a lot of work to do so that I’m averaging enough sleep a night when I take tossing and turning into account, but I’m much closer to that.

One unexpected thing I did discover about myself while doing this challenge was what later bedtime would also work. While I don’t want to be getting under 5 hours of sleep a night, there is something about making sure you are in the best part of your sleep cycle when you do wake up. So if I’m up a bit too late, I now have a slightly better idea of how much later I should stay up so getting up doesn’t feel as hard. It’s weird to think that sometimes forcing myself to have less sleep will result in not being as tired, but it does work. But it’s not something I want to get into the habit of and I want to work on increasing my sleep.

My sleep challenge is going to continue over the next few months for sure, but I’m glad I did focus on it last month so I could get some of the better habits started and I have a better idea of what to work on. I knew I needed to fix things, but the specifics were a bit up in the air until I tested them out and I discovered new things that I hope will help me.

I wanted to shift to a bit more concrete challenge this month so my progress was easier to see. I had a few ideas of what I could do, but I ended up being inspired by a few different things that happened. First, my phone gave me an alert that I was running out of space. I am waiting to see if Apple will release another smaller iPhone because I don’t like the giant ones, so I have to do what I can to make my current phone work as long as possible. I also realized that I wasn’t using my iPad the same way I had been using it when I got it. I still use it and am so grateful to have it, but I was just getting frustrated with a few things that were’t working the same way my phone would do.

So I decided that for this month, I’m going to do some digital organizing. I have already been clearing things out of my phone to add more space, but I know there is so much more than I can do. And I know that a lot of my frustration with my iPad comes down to not finding my apps as easily because they aren’t organized the same way and I just grab my phone because it is easier.

I know this is really a first world problem, but I know that being more organized on my devices will help me be more productive. And that really is my goal with so many different aspects of my life. I don’t want to have to waste time trying to find where something is on a device and then waste time being frustrated after I can’t find it. I do have a bit of this issue on my computer as well with a few things on there that I don’t need or links in my bookmarks that are outdated, but I don’t notice it as much. Maybe that’s because I spend so much time on my computer with work so I don’t feel like I’m wasting as much time. But I want to try to work on that as well.

I’m sure in working through this organizing I’ll discover other things with my devices that I want to work on. Maybe I’ll find new systems to make my life easier. Or I’ll discover new apps that I will want to help with things that aren’t as simple as they can. Doing any sort of audit or organization really brings out new and interesting things. I’m excited to see what I will discover over this next month working on it.

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Slowly Spring Cleaning (or Tidying Up My Way)

Posted on April 18, 2019 | Comments Off on Slowly Spring Cleaning (or Tidying Up My Way)

I’ve read “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up” quite a while ago. I haven’t watched the Netflix series yet, but it’s on my watch list to watch eventually. But I am familiar with the idea of what Marie Kondo says in both even though I haven’t read the book in a long time. A lot of it is stuff that I already do, but it seems like every so often I have a big push to do some extra cleaning and organizing.

Right now, I’m in the middle of doing some organizing. But instead of doing it in a big effort, I’ve slowly been doing it. In the past, I have gotten rid of things that I probably should have kept or I forgot where I stored something until I found it again months later. I don’t want to have that issue again because there’s no need for it. And I don’t have any sort of deadline to when I need this to be done so I can take my time.

Since I’ve been in this long cleaning/organizing habit, I’ve debated about going back to the book or watching the Netflix series since so many people have been raving about how it has changed their lives. But I remember when I read it the first time how I really didn’t connect with everything in it. I don’t have a ton of stuff I have to get rid of. My issue is just making sure that I am putting things away in places that make sense and can be done over and over again. If the place I decide to store something isn’t the most convenient option, I probably won’t be doing it as needed. I’ll wait until things get bad and then I’ll have that mad rush to clean.

I know one of the big organizational things in the book and series is about how to store clothing. I love the file folder idea of storing shirt and pants. But I actually don’t have clothes like that in drawers. I have a drawer of workout clothes where I have one pile of workout towels, one pile of workout pants, and one pile of workout shirts. This drawer is just what I use for Orangetheory so I only have exactly what I need in there. I don’t have to dig through things to find what I like to wear in class. I found it the easiest way to store things compared to having a drawer for tops and for bottoms. I do have another drawer of random workout/lounge clothes that probably could be organized in the file folder style, but since I don’t go into that drawer that often I don’t feel pushed to do it. My bra/underwear/socks/pj drawer has dividers and is organized, but I know it could be better and that will be something I will be tackling soon. But besides that, all my other clothing is hung up so I don’t have a way to fold them. Everything is on the same type of thin hangers and is organized by type and color.

With everyone raving about how they love the system in the book and series, I felt like I should do it to. But the more I think about it, the less it makes sense to me to do it. There’s nothing wrong with her method, but it doesn’t have to be for everyone. And for my system in my current house, it’s not right. Maybe when I move one day I’ll revisit it and decide to do it, but not now.

I think letting go of the idea that I should be doing what everyone else is doing has been helpful. I don’t feel the same pressure as I did before about what I should be doing with cleaning and organizing and making sure it’s done quickly. I can take my time and there’s nothing wrong with that. I probably could be working a bit faster and that’s something I’m going to try to focus on this weekend. I have been doing little bursts of cleaning and sometimes I use that as an excuse to not do more.

I know the idea of spring cleaning is usually a big to-do with a huge day doing everything. But I’m enjoying taking my time and allowing myself to test out different things with how I want to store stuff around my home. And I have a feeling this won’t be just spring cleaning but a longer, ongoing thing. And that’s fine too. With such a small house, I know how quickly things can go from a little messy to a big disaster and working on it each day helps prevent that.

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It’s Tax Time (or Seeing My Tracking And Organizing Pay Off)

Posted on March 6, 2019 | Comments Off on It’s Tax Time (or Seeing My Tracking And Organizing Pay Off)

I don’t think anybody looks forward to doing their taxes. It can be scary and overwhelming and a lot of the time you have no clue if you are going to owe money or get money back. I think this year is even crazier because there are so many new laws that affect taxes and people have no idea how it will affect things for them. The stories I have been seeing online all talk about how tax refunds are much lower than they usually are or people who normally get money back are owing for the first time.

I know that my situation is a bit different from many others. First, all of my income is 1099 or independent contractor work. I don’t have any taxes taken out of my paychecks and I have to make sure I save money. I also pay estimated taxes 4 times a year to cover what is assumed to be my tax bill for the year. I have only been doing this for a few years, but I am very careful about this and make sure I stay on top of it all. And it has been working out well for me the past few years. If I owe money, it’s less than what I saved up to cover my taxes. And last year, I actually got money back!

I had a pretty good feeling that I would be getting a little money back this time. My estimated taxes were based on the money that I made in 2017, and I made less money in 2018. So my estimated payments actually had me overpaying my taxes. I also knew my health insurance is always a weird thing with my subsidy not being the correct amount. I felt pretty certain that I was paying more than I should for it, but I wasn’t totally sure because again there are so many new rules this time.

Before I had my appointment to get my taxes done, I got a call regarding my appointment. The person who does my taxes had an appointment come up the afternoon I was going to come in and I was given 2 options. First, I could pick another date and I would still be charged the February rate (which is the cheapest rate). Or, I could email in the worksheets we do before the appointment so a majority of the information would be already in the system before I arrived. I picked emailing in my worksheet since I already had done all the work. My appointment was only going to be 30 minutes short (usually they are 90 minutes) and I knew getting all of that information already in the system would easily cut the appointment down by 30 minutes or more.

There was still some work that we had to work on together when I went in for my appointment. There were a few things I wasn’t totally sure I did right and there were a few sections that needed a bit more information. I brought everything in with me and I had everything we needed, I just didn’t do it ahead of time since usually it’s all done at the appointment.

And while everything was getting figured out, I did learn that the new tax rules weren’t going to affect me like they affect a majority of people who get their taxes done. Since I am a sole proprietor/independent contractor, I can still write off my business expenses. If you are an employee, the costs of doing business cannot be deducted (for example, teachers can no longer write off buying supplies as a deduction). But for me, all of my expenses can still be written off like they have in the past. That’s a good thing since I have to pay a decent amount of money in cyber security insurance (required by my job since I take credit card information and put it into our secure online server) and I pay for things like a separate phone line just for work. I didn’t have as many deductions as I have had in the past, but it was still a lot of them.

Every year that I get my taxes done, I learn new things about how to organize and track things. I finally have it down to a system that I am extremely happy with and it made me doing my worksheet much easier this year compared to before. And I know that my tax preparer appreciates all the work I do and knows that I have everything ready for her if she needs to see it. She also mentioned she only allowed me to email in my worksheet ahead of time and have a reduced appointment time because she knew how on top of things and organized I am.

While it’s nice to have my organization appreciated by my tax preparer, it’s even better to see that work pay off. And as I expected, I am getting money back this year! And it’s actually a lot more money than I was expecting. A good chunk of that money is from overpaying for healthcare and that’s only because I tracked my business deductions so well. My taxable income gets reduced by those expenses and my financial responsibility for my insurance is based on taxable income and not the full income I have. That is a difference between being an employee and an independent contractor and I didn’t know that. I assumed it was based on my pre-tax income and that’s why I had my income set the way I did last year. I don’t know if I’ll adjust it for this year since I’d rather overpay and have that money go toward anything I owe in taxes than to underpay and owe a lot of money.

I was so relieved to see that the work I put into tracking and organizing was worth it. It does take time to file everything properly so I have it ready at tax time, but the money I got back easily paid for the time I took to do that. And it will be nice to get a refund this year. I really need the money and a lot of it will be going toward bills. I will also use it to pay off my Disneyland pass since I had to set it to be monthly payments this time. I’d rather just have it paid and not have to have it taken out of my credit card each month. I don’t know if I’ll use it for anything else fun since I should be responsible and put it toward bills, but I’ll see how things go.

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Feeling The Need To Clean (or Working On Quality Over Quantity)

Posted on March 13, 2018 | 1 comment

I’ve written about doing big cleaning spurts before, but recently I’ve experienced one of the weirdest needs to clean I’ve ever had. This started a few weeks ago after a friend of mine went to Mardi Gras and was telling me about a moment of clarity when they realized how wasteful everything seemed. She couldn’t believe how many people were taking beads when they would be throwing them out later. And the streets were cluttered with trash and she just couldn’t believe that she was in the middle of that.

It didn’t hit me right away after my friend shared that story, but after reflecting back on it for a little bit I had the same moment of clarity in a way. I was looking around my house and just had a feeling of panic over how cluttered and messy it was looking. I know that it wasn’t that bad and none of my friends felt it was messy, but to me I just couldn’t take it. And then I had the feeling over being overwhelmed by having just too much stuff.

I’m not a hoarder in any sense, but I do have a tendency to over-shop. A lot of this is with clothing because when I find something that fits me I usually will get multiples of it. I’m really trying to get out of that habit, but it’s hard when I find something that I really like. I’ve been working on cleaning out my closet and drawers and have had bags of things to donate. I also had the opportunity to reorganize as well since I finally had more space.

Another place I seem to have an unintentional collection is with water bottles. I get a ton of them as a part of swag bags and then there are some that I have bought as well. But I usually use one of only a few water bottles. And I finally bought one that I had been wanting for a long time (it’s sold by a company that only does bulk orders but I was able to order a single bottle from them). And when I got that perfect water bottle and I was trying to put it away, I realized how ridiculous my collection had become.

And after taking that photo I realized there were more bottles that I forgot about! I sorted them out and put the ones I use and the ones I have sentimental value with on one side and all the rest on another. I had 10 or 12 bottles that I don’t care about and I didn’t want to keep in my house. Another friend of mine mentioned how their kids are always losing water bottles so I gave her all the ones I didn’t need. It was a win-win because I got them out of my house and she got something she needed for her kids.

And I spent part of yesterday working on getting as much of the other stuff in my house organized. The box I had been using for holiday decorations wasn’t big enough so I got a big plastic tub to store them in. I got organizers and baskets for my bathroom and threw out products I don’t use. My house still could use more decluttering, but I’ve made a huge step in the right direction and I don’t feel as overwhelmed anymore.

Every time I have a big cleaning like this, I tell myself that I won’t get that way again. But it always happens. And that’s because of my over-shopping tendency. But I’m much more aware that I have that issue and I’m hoping that knowing it will help me not be as bad about it. I really don’t need to own a ton of the same thing if I could just get one nice version of it instead. For my water bottles, I didn’t need 10 bottles that were ok when I could have just bought the 1 that I really wanted. It’s tough because the better thing is usually more expensive, but in the long run it ends up being cheaper than buying multiples of the less expensive thing.

I have a dream that my house will be one of those minimalistic dream homes, but I know that it would be tough to make that happen because I do have so much in my house that I love and want to keep. But I can work on storing things properly and out of the way so it doesn’t feel as full as it really it. And I have a feeling that for the next few weeks I’m probably going to keep working on what I’ve started and I may have something much closer to that dream than I ever had before.

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Making My House Look Fancy (or Doing Some Upgrades For The New Year)

Posted on December 28, 2017 | Comments Off on Making My House Look Fancy (or Doing Some Upgrades For The New Year)

I’m not sure why, but for some reason I’ve been on a big cleaning and organizing spree. Maybe it’s because so many of my friends posted photos of their holiday decorations and I thought their homes looked much nicer and more grown-up than mine. Also, I know that things have gotten a bit cluttered lately and I know how easily that can get out of control. But mainly, I just wanted to upgrade some stuff around my house because it was time to do so.

Things started pretty basic with getting a new shower organizer (my old one was starting to rust) and I got some baskets I could hang off of towel racks in my bathroom (I have a serious lack of storage in there). I also wanted to do some better organizing in my kitchen. I had won a blender at Orangetheory a while ago but hadn’t organized my kitchen to fit it in there. I had my old blender still in there and I knew that it was time to get rid of that. So I started to clean and move things around in my kitchen to find a space for the new blender and that got me to move things around more.

And of course when I started moving things around I realized that I needed to do some more shopping and organizing. My parents gave me a set of knifes over 10 years ago that I never opened because I already had a knife set. But since I was doing so many upgrades I decided to switch knife sets. And since the new knife set didn’t have a knife block, I had to get one. I ended up finding a really compact one that didn’t have pre-cut slots so I could use it with any knife set. I also found a new dish drying rack that was much smaller than my old one. Since my kitchen counter space is limited, it’s nice to have more space now that I’ve switched things up.

And the most recent upgrade was inspired by my first one. The new shower organizer was nice but since I could put more things it in I wanted it to look nicer. The variety of bottles in there made things seem more cluttered than it really was and I wanted to fix that. I’ve used nicer containers for soap before since the giant bottles don’t fit where I use them. So I decided to look into new containers for my shampoo and conditioner. I ended up finding glass bottles that looked almost identical to the face wash bottle I already had. I got those (I realized that I could have just gotten more face wash bottles, but it was much cheaper to get the new bottles).

I also had learned from past mistakes about decanting one liquid into a new container and got some funnels too. And while it was a bit slower than I thought to move everything into the new containers, the end result looks so nice!

I’m thinking about maybe getting more containers like this for other things I have around my house like lotions or my body wash (which is still in the original bottle in my shower). It really does look so much nicer this way when the containers are out and I don’t have somewhere to store them away. And I can get the bigger sizes of things now and then pour them into the smaller containers (which should save me a little money).

Of course, all of these upgrades did cost me money which wasn’t the best. I really wanted to save money, but once I got started on these projects I wasn’t really able to stop. I’ve got a few more projects in mind that I want to do, but I’m hoping that I can do them without buying more stuff. A lot of this organization has been trying to minimize what I have in my house. I’m aware that I have too much stuff at times and I need to work on that. But when I’m getting rid of stuff, it helps to also make the stuff that I’m keeping in my house look nicer.

My organization and upgrade project is an ongoing thing. But it’s nice to know that I’m going to be starting 2018 in a much nicer looking place that feels much more grown-up to me.

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Default ThumbnailMore Empty Space In My House (The Cleaning And Organizing Continues) Default ThumbnailOrganization Time (or Seeing A Bit Of A Mess) Default ThumbnailBrunch and Shopping (or Helping A Friend Make Some Upgrades) Default ThumbnailNew Year’s Eve Fun (or Making Sure 2014 Is A Lucky Year) Default ThumbnailGetting Rid Of Extras (or Cleaning House) Default ThumbnailStill Doing More House Projects (or Just Trying To Find Busy Work)

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Another Monthly Challenge (or What To Do When You Are Crazy Busy)

Posted on October 3, 2017 | 1 comment

The beginning of a new month is always exciting for me. But it’s been even more exciting since I started using my Volt Planner last year because it means it’s the beginning for a new monthly challenge! It can be a struggle sometimes to think of a new challenge each month, but once I pick one I really get into it. And knowing that I’ll be doing that again each month is something I look forward to.

Last month, my challenge was to tweet more. Specifically I wanted to tweet more about SAG-AFTRA and union related issues. My role as a SAG-AFTRA delegate is officially just as the convention (which is this week), but I don’t want the end of the convention to be the end of my involvement. And while being on social media isn’t the most active thing, I figure that every little bit helps. And I also got a lot out of doing this because every day I was reviewing tweets that might be ones I wanted to share. So I was learning more every time I reviewed them. I feel so much more educated about union issues (and not just actor union issues) than I ever have.

This month, I struggled a bit with picking something to set as my challenge but it wasn’t for the usual reason. I have a couple of things I want to do, but this month is going to be very crazy for me. I’ve got the SAG-AFTRA convention, lots of doctor appointments, work, podcast stuff, some projects I’m working on, and then trying to have a social life. I know that I will be a bit stressed and I didn’t want to pick something that might add more stress to my life. I’ve picked some challenges that have done that in the past, and it can work when the month isn’t going to be stressful. But I know October will be crazy. I’ve been telling people my life won’t be normal again until after the 16th because that’s when I seem to finally have free time in my calendar.

But there has been one thing that I’ve had on my monthly and weekly planning sheets in my planner that I don’t see to ever get around to. I really need to clean my desk and my closet. I probably need to work on my entire house, but I really see how packed my desk and closet are and I know I don’t need everything I have. I also keep bringing more things in without removing stuff so it gets more and more cluttered. But when I look at it it seems so overwhelming.

So I’ve set my monthly challenge for October to do speed cleaning/organizing every day. I have an alarm set and I want to do maybe 5-10 minutes every day. The idea is that I’d focus on one thing each day. For example, with my clothes I’d look at tops one day and dresses another. I don’t need to look at my closet as a whole since that has been what is looking like too much of a project. With my desk, I might break it down my the drawers or by category but I’m not sure yet. And there are so many other areas in my house that I could organize by breaking it down into chunks like this.

I had read “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up” a while ago, and while I don’t agree with everything in the book there are some really good points. I only want to have things in my home that make me happy and bring me joy. My definition of those things are a bit different from what the book talks about, but the general idea is the same. There are things in my closet that I look at and get annoyed about because it doesn’t fit anymore (either too big or too small), it doesn’t fit right, or it just is something I never can figure out when I should wear it. I don’t need that taking up space in the tiny closet I have.

But besides decluttering, I just want to have a clean house that makes me happy. It’s never too dirty, but there are times that I have to spend a good amount of time cleaning every room before I have company over. I know that nobody cares if my house is a little messy, but I do. And if I worked on 5-10 minutes of cleaning a day (either by cleaning one room or doing one type of cleaning like vacuuming or dusting), it shouldn’t get too overwhelming before I have company over.

I know that even 5-10 minutes of cleaning might be a bit tough for me to do on the craziest days I have coming up this month, but that’s ok. I understand now that I don’t have to be perfect every single day but instead I want to get into the habit so that it becomes something I don’t even have to think about each day. It would be nice to know that I have a clean house pretty much all the time and not a semi-clean house most of the time and a super clean house occasionally.

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Default ThumbnailAnother Attempt At Mindfulness (or I Think I Need To Work On This Until I Figure It Out) Default ThumbnailDecember Monthly Challenge (or Wrapping Up For The Year) Default ThumbnailAlmost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November) Default ThumbnailAn Isolation Monthly Challenge (or Just Trying To Keep Things Going) Default ThumbnailNot Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailStruggling To Figure Out A Monthly Challenge (or Finding Myself Again)

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My Version Of Back To School (or I Need To Get Out Of My Summer Mindset)

Posted on August 18, 2017 | Comments Off on My Version Of Back To School (or I Need To Get Out Of My Summer Mindset)

Most of the schools in LA went back this past week. It was cute to see all the first day of school photos from my friends with kids and most of my friends are pretty excited to have some free time back in their lives. It’s crazy to see some of my friends’ kids in school when it seems like it wasn’t that long ago that they were born. Especially since I don’t feel like I’ve aged as much as those kids have!

Back to school time used to mean so much to me. When I was in school it was a great way to reset things in my life and get them back on schedule. Even when I was working as a substitute teacher it had that effect on me. There’s something about knowing that school is back that triggered a sense of seriousness in me and I’ve realized that I don’t have that anymore.

I don’t miss school. I do a lot of learning through various things on my own every day so I don’t need a set class that is fall to summer. But I do miss the feeling of resetting things and getting back on track. And getting back on track is something that I do struggle with at times and yet again I’m going through that.

I have to feel lucky that I have my fitness stuff down and that doesn’t need to much work. I think things would be so much worse for me if I didn’t have that in place. But food is still a struggle and I know that things have gotten a bit out of control again. It’s a combination of my schedule being crazy, having lots of adventures and outings, and just being lazy because of the heat.

I’ve said this so many times before, but I really need to get back to my meal planning. Or at least having better options in my house to choose from. There have been far too many days where it’s 3pm and I’m done with work and I’m going to the grocery store because I’ve got nothing to have for dinner. And unfortunately, when I do that I will sometimes buy things I don’t need because they seem good to me in the moment.

I’m working on getting back to the way I was meal planning earlier this year, but it’s not exactly what I think I need right now. So I’m back to experimenting with what things will work and what will help to make me as successful as possible with not having problems with having the right food in my house. I know that my schedule is still a bit crazy and will continue to be a bit crazy, but that can’t be an excuse for me anymore. Life will always have moments of craziness and that can’t be stopping me.

I also need to refocus on work and time management. For the next month things are extra crazy for me because I’m doing the temporary job for an old boss of mine. I have to manage when each day I’m doing each job and I really need to focus on it because I need to get it done when I plan on getting it done. It would be so easy to let time fly by and not have the chance to do what I need to do a certain day. I make sure that it doesn’t happen, but I also see where there are cracks in my plan and where I can improve things.

It will be so nice when one day I don’t have to stress about these things as much. Maybe one day food will come as easy to me as the workouts do now. And maybe one day I’ll only have one job (or one job with a few side jobs that are related to that job) so I don’t have to color coordinate my schedule to know when I need to work each job each day. Fortunately with work, I am an organized person so it’s not too horrible to manage things. But I do look forward to when things are simpler in life and that I can focus on one thing at a time instead of multitasking every single hour and day.

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Posted in Fitness, Food, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss, Work

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Time For Some Refocusing (or I Need To Do Some Follow Through)

Posted on June 14, 2017 | Comments Off on Time For Some Refocusing (or I Need To Do Some Follow Through)

My life has been getting a bit crazy lately, but crazy in a good way. I’m back to my normal routine without the worry about medical issues in my head. I’m back in the dating game and while I’ve had some negative experiences I’m having fun. I’m going out with my friends and doing so much stuff that I love. Honestly, this is close to the happiest I’ve been as an adult. I think a lot of it is because I don’t care as much about what other’s think, but I also think I’m just making an effort to make me happy.

Not everything in my life is going great, but it’s pretty awesome right now. I’m taking more time to focus on the positives in my life than the negatives that might come up. But because I’m not focusing on the negatives, I’m slacking off on some things and I know that I need to work on that balance.

Some of the slacking off has been cleaning and organizing. This has been something on my to-do list for a while and I’m just not taking the time out to do the work that I need to do. And looking at my calendar for the coming days, I honestly don’t know when I’ll have the chance to do it. And because I want to do more than just a basic cleaning, I know that this is something I need to set aside the time to do.

My desk has been getting a bit out of control because I’m sitting at it so many hours a day. When I start working on stuff and don’t get to finish, I just set it to the side on my desk thinking I’ll pick it up later. But later doesn’t seem to come and some of these things have been on my desk for too long. One of the things that’s been on my desk forever has been the dry erase board that I used for my Oscars costume. When I got it, I assumed that I would be using it at my desk or somewhere else. But I haven’t done anything with it and I don’t know now if I will be using it. I just need to make a decision and do something with it.

My closet is another trap right now for me. I really need to go through all my clothes and figure out what I want to keep and what I need to toss. There are several things in my closet that are now too big for me and I don’t want to keep them around anymore. But sometimes it’s hard to let those things go because I justify in my head that maybe I could get it tailored smaller or that I might wear it baggy. But I know I won’t and I just have to let it go. There are also things that have gotten torn or just not my style anymore and I need to get rid of it. But again, this is a major cleaning and I know I’ll need to set aside lots of time to do it. I probably will need to try on a lot of stuff from my closet to do this and when I do this cleaning I also am looking at making a list of what I own so I don’t feel like I’m missing something in my closet and go out and buy it (I’ve done that before and have had to make trips to return duplicates).

And as always, I just want to clean up some of the clutter that is in my house. I keep a lot of stuff for sentiment value and I know that I don’t need to do that. I want to work on digitizing more stuff that I keep and finding new and clever ways to organize and store what I want to have. It’s a bit overwhelming to think about how much I want to get done, but I also know in the long run that this will be an awesome thing for me to do and I will probably be really happy when I feel like I have a cleaner, more organized, and happier space.

I know a lot of people who have gone through major cleanings like this have been inspired by the book “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up”. I actually have this book. I bought it almost 2 years ago and for some reason I haven’t really started to read it. I know that I always get distracted by other books that I have, but now that I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the work I want to get done I think this might be a good time to start reading it. I’m in the middle of one book right now so I probably won’t be able to read it until next week, but I honestly forgot that I owned the book until I started to feel as overwhelmed as I am now.

I’m tired of setting a goal to work on cleaning my space and not following through with it. I need to just get my butt in gear and do it. But it’s not always easy to make a change like this when you’ve been putting it off. But hopefully soon I will find the motivation and time to get this done and I can feel calmer in my space so that my home will make me as happy as my social life is making me.

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Default ThumbnailAnother Monthly Challenge (or What To Do When You Are Crazy Busy) Default ThumbnailSpring Cleaning (or Needing To Declutter Again) Default ThumbnailIs It Too Early To Be Spring Cleaning? (or Out With The Unused) Default ThumbnailCleaning Up And Giving Things Away (or Finding More Space In My House) Default ThumbnailA Big Cleaning Week (or An Excuse to Organize) Default ThumbnailRethinking Being A Warrior (or Refocusing On My Word For The Year)

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