31 days of organizing

So over at organizing made fun she is doing a 31 day organizing challenge and I am participating. She's going to give a challenge every morning and then wants people to take 15 minutes to complete the challenge and post pictures to her Instagram or Pinterest. I'm excited! This is just the kick in the pants I need. Here's a link to the first day http://organizingmadefun.blogspot.com/2013/09/31-days-of-spontaneous-organizing-day-1.html?m=1

Somedays...

Somedays as a mom you have so many good intentions. You decide you will actually get back to your cleaning routine but because you haven't been in your routine for a while things take longer. You realize what used to take ten minutes now takes way longer. And you also realize that the bookshelf that were once so neatly organized are a disaster and you must focus your attention there.

Today is one of those days. My kitchen is basically tidy but everywhere else got missed because I spent so much time on the bookshelves. 

But I've come to realize that's just life. You pick and choose what's a mess and what's not and you go on hoping to get to the messy stuff tomorrow. At least Ainsley and Aubrey were having fun playing together while I tore everything apart..

Dirty Little Secret...

Ok so I'm going to let you in on one of my little secrets.

Are you ready..... Here I go.... 

Some days the only reason I clean my kitchen is so that I can feel good about opening the blinds on my sliding glass door. 

There, I said it. That felt good to finally get off my chest

I love the warmth that comes when the sun shines in, but I DO NOT love my favorite backyard neighbor seeing in to my messy kitchen. So I always feel like it needs to be clean for the blinds to be open. Hey at least I've got something motivating me...haha.

Now that the secret is out I guess you will know why my blinds are closed the next time you walk behind my house. :)

Weekly Challange

A weely challange is your opportunity to join us on our adventure. Or just peek into our homes and feel relived that your house isn't nearly as bad as ours ;-) Ok so every week we will post a before and after pic of a place in our home that is being overtaken by stuff. Every week we will attack full on the stuff that is taking over our lives. What to know how much the crap I took out of my master bedroom vanity weighed? Read on!

That which you own owns you.

I'm Ari I like life and I try to live it well. I married my husband just two months after we started dating and life with him has been an adventure ever since. I have three sweet kids. Miles is 6 1/2 and is scary smart. Issac is almost 5 and LOVES intensely. Abeni is two and a half and she is very determined. We love adventures and laughter.

Lately I have been so unimpressed with all the stuff that surrounds me. It seems we live in a world of more, more, more, is better! I am surrounded by things. One day I was cruising the Internet (ahhh pinterest I love you) and I came a phrase; "That which you own owns you." Seriously those little words changed my life! I don't want things to own me or my life. I want to live my life on my terms and in my own way. So I waited a year cause I'm a procrastinator preparing to get started. Now however I am ready to tackle my "stuff" habit head on. I am determined to have less and do more with my less. I don't want stuff to own me. To quote The Father of The Bride, "George Banks Ari M is saying NO!"

Laundry mess...

my laundry mess

I am a mom to five kids and laundry is so easy one of my biggest challenges. Most days my laundry area in the basement looks worse than the picture at the top of this post. I am a little embarrassed to me showing this to the world but I figure the first step in fixing something is to admit you have a problem.

The first problem with this mess is:
All seven of us have way too many clothes. In all honesty I really think that I am a clothes hoarder. I can tell you exactly who gave my child what and when they gave it to them. My memories seem to be attached to their clothes so that makes it extremely hard to get rid of ANYTHING! I have four little girls and I have basically passed all of the clothes down one by one to each of them. I can picture every time any one of them has worn an outfit and feel as if I will lose that memory if I were to get rid of that item of clothing. To try and fix this problem when I am folding the laundry I look at each item and decided if that is something that I will recycle to the next child, if I want to donate it or just toss it out....

one of my many donation bags

the sort in to boxes to store piles

...This has been working very well for us. I have actually been weeding through our clothes pretty well (when I stay on top of the laundry). I do need to sort out the recycle clothes in to boxes so that I will be able to pull them out as needed, but that is another post all in it's self.

The second problem in my mess of laundry is:
How to get it all washed. Even if I got us all down to five outfits each (which let's just face it probably isn't gonna happen). I would still be washing over 70 things each week. That is not even counting bath towels, kitchen towels and our bedding. So I need to have a plan of how I'm going to wash all of our clothes so that we have things to wear. Right now my plan is to do a load a day wash as needed. As much as I would love to say I am more organized than this, I am not. I am usually searching around the house at about 9:30 or 10 pm looking for things for my husband and kids to wear the next day. Now that is just not any fun and I'm kind of sick of the stress of it. So here is my NEW plan...ONE LAUNDRY HAMPER. I am sick of going in to everyone's closet to find their dirty clothes. I am a visual person so if I don't see a full hamper I'm going to think there is nothing to wash. My goal with one hamper is for everyone to put their clothes in there and then when it's full (it probably will be every day) I will take that downstairs and wash it. So basically I will be doing at least a load a day, this just makes me feel better about it.

I am going to keep you posted on my progress because I need to be accountable to someone so that I will keep this laundry going. If your laundry life is a mess, it's probably not as bad as mine, let us know what you've decided to do about it. And if your laundry life is wonderful....please let me know your secret so that I won't be living in such a disaster.