Paring down...

I have come to realize that some of my frustration comes from my long list of goals and desires and the want to accomplish those things all at once. Of course I can't accomplish them all at once! As they say, even God did not create the Earth in one day. So I'm paring down the list into more manageable pieces. One of the things on my list is getting my home decluttered and homey-fied. Before my realization (see above) I was trying to do all the rooms at once. What a doof! Have I not been to FlyLady.net and even recommended some of her techniques? All this time I was using her suggestions, yet not really using them. I was basically working in the zones, but not in the best manner possible. So, in an effort to pare down the "stuff" in my home, which in turn will allow me to seriously homey-fy by only working with things I love, I am going to focus my liquidating in the zone of each week. Of course I will keep other things, like dishes and laundry, from piling up, but in terms of the decluttering, I'm going to do it in each zone until the clutter is bye-bye and the real important stuff is ready for me to get creative with.

That was a bit long winded and I apologize. Here's what I accomplished today:

I'm working in the guest room this week, which is Zone 3 for me. As I've said before, it is the piece-de-resistance. Actually, that's not a very good description because it doesn't resist much- it pretty much just lets me put all sorts of stuff in piles all over the place. It does not resist clutter. Oh wait, it resists declutter. Rigggght, gotchya.

One of my paring down steps of the day was to go through some of my ephemera, specifically that from our honeymoon. I went through and threw away the stuff that wasn't really needed/meaningful and put the rest in an envelope for safekeeping until I'm able to scrapbook it with the photos... except the flip flops. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those yet.

This is the drawer where the ephemera was kept. This drawer is now empty. Yay.

Boxes under the bed. This can be kind of scary, but really, my under-the-bed boxes aren't that bad. This one is kind of a catch-all, but I fixed it up a bit. All of the gift wrap and gift bags went to another box that I had previously designated for such items.

Some stuff got put in the "to-be-filed" pile. And then there was this stack of papers... notes from college classes. Honestly, do I need this pile of firestarting material? Not really, but I didn't throw it away yet.

Baby steps, people, baby steps. I mean, I could possibly need these in my administrative assistant job. I mean, after all, these are notes from justice classes and I do work at a police department.

Yep, that's called justification my friends. All packrats use justification. I'm de-pack-ratting though, so consider me in the process of quitting justification as it relates to the crap around my house.

The box after. On the left are cards (which I had already sorted and pared down a long time ago) and the college papers. On the right is a stack of blank notebooks. These will not go to waste, I promise. And sure this liquidation could have gone further, but must I repeat?

Baby steps, baby steps. I would also add a justification, but like I said, I'm trying to quit.

Piles. This was probably the worst part of the guest room- the piles over in the corner and under the window. As you can see I did pretty well cleaning this up (Left=before, right=after). That basket is a disaster area- also known as the "to-be-filed-pile." Scary isn't it? Don't worry, it's on the to-do list.

Some of the stuff from the above piles were separated and organized into these lovely storage boxes. Photos, stationary, scrapbooking stickers/etc, stamps, miscellaneous, and writing implements.

After getting some decluttering done, which seems small here but which I feel good about, I made dinner. Another small goal is to start eating dinner at the table. I accomplished that tonight and it was nice to be able to have a chat with Hubby about his day and mine... although some of that accountant talk... nevermind, I digress enough as it is.

And finally, this is Gracie in one of her finer moments. She's sticking her nose in the handle holes of this Bud Light box... thinking she'll fit inside that way? Well, whatever she's thinking, I found it entertaining to watch her trying to stick more than just her nose in there, which caused the box to kind of get stuck on her face until it finally fell over. I can't really explain and should have taken video, but anyways, I found it funny and I laughed. Out loud. LOL'ed.

I'm going to want to edit this post. But I won't, because that's not what life in the moment is about. And therefore, I apologize for the made up words and the crazy talk about justification. Please come back again tomorrow.