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Originally Posted by sunnysandiegan
Thanks for the positive comments!
The fire ceremony was really beneficial and lovely!
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Jan 12 - Mondays are my "home blessing hour" days. I borrowed the inspiring term from FLYlady, but I execute it differently than she suggests.
I just spend an hour doing whatever needs the most love and attention in our physical home. I do not recall what got accomplished this particular day, but I had help from my DD (age 7). I also had a healing session and cleared out some negative "stuff" in order to make room for wonderful thoughts and feelings (to go along with my intention for 2009, as written the night before).
Jan 13 - On Tuesdays, I spend an hour on finances and paperwork. I got rid of a stack of paperwork and "processed" another stack.
I also spent a bit of time on the phone taking care of some lingering business. Dare I say I cleared some more "mental clutter"???
DD & I also ran errands and took care of a lingering task or two.
Jan 14 - Wednesdays are usually "project days" for me, but DD is still on Winter Break and a project not directly involving her is unlikely to succeed. LOL However, she decided to go on a picnic with grandpa for a couple hours in the afternoon and then played at his house, so I got to finish some *long* lingering finance projects. It took me hours to do the research, but we'll be saving money and we are ready for the changes to DH's healthcare coming on 2/1/09. More "mental clutter" GONE!!! Not to mention the paper clutter I had been keeping to remind me to do the tasks. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, I filled the larger than usual wastebasket 3-4 times!
Oh, I also converted this particular wastebasket in the family office to a "recycling only" receptacle.
Jan 15 - Thursdays are special Mommy & Daughter days usually.
It is DD's short day when she is in school, so we spend the extra time doing something special together. Um, well, since she had an upcoming sleepover at our house, our oh so special activity this Thursday was cleaning the house!
We had gotten so far off track due to the holidays and extended work break for DH (6 days off) and school break for DD (4-1/2 weeks off). As I pulled laundry out of the dryer, I inspected for holes and wear/tear. As we straightened up rooms, items were critically analyzed. We filled a bag for charity already. (We just donated an entire TRUNK FULL of stuff last week!) We did get out for an hour or so for a fun playdate.
Jan 16 - Our family Winter Break project has been building DD a dollhouse from recycled items. We had been collecting gently used items and had neighbors collecting for us, too. Our living room was a disaster zone from this project! We checked potential items against the dolls and the space in the house and recycled all the items that were not suitable. Um, five trips to the recycling bins! Other housecleaning resulted in a trip or two to the trash. DD decided she wanted to pull out her trundle for the sleepover for the first time in, um, a year. DH rid the house of dust bunnies. LOL I painted the girls' nails and that finished off one of those lousy bottles of kids nail polish.
(Friday, btw, is traditionally 'Friend Day' at our house. LOL It is rarely a sleepover night, though.)
Jan 17 - Today DD had a birthday party to attend while I was in class most of the day. These are the times I am SO GRATEFUL I have a gift box with items purchased on sale for kids and women and general adult gifts. DH & DD "shopped" in my special box and DD made a card with existing (and plentiful) craft supplies. They even figured out where the gift wrapping supplies were. I had sort of forgotten all about the birthday party.
(I had remembered I was picking DD up from the party after class, so that's the important part, right??? LOL) Anyway, this "box" had grown to two boxes and was overflowing at that. I had recently gone through it all and pared it down considerably. Just one box now and things fit even better now.
DH also helped me declutter the freezer a bit by starting a turkey stock on his own. He actually cooks far more often and far better than I do, but the whole stock (bone broth) thing is my baby and he hasn't even paid attention to it...or so I thought! LOL He had been saving cut-up pieces of veggie scraps in a freezer bag just for me. So, the old foil roasting pan got recycled along with the rest of the turkey carcass from Thanksgiving and a bag of veggie scraps from the last two weeks. Our freezer is looking GOOD!
January is turning out to be a mighty productive month for our family!!!
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Jan 18 - Hmmm... My decluttering/simplifying/organizing efforts were limited to making a crockpot full of soup completely from leftovers that would have otherwise been thrown out or composted in the past. We ended up getting dinner and two lunches (total of 6 meals!) from this one "free" dish!
Somewhat related is we spent time planning our meals for the upcoming week purposefully using as much from our pantry/freezer/fridge as possible. Also, DH finished up the clean your car challenge (car wash inside and out).
Jan 19 - I have never in my life gone shopping for an entire week's worth of food with only 4 items on the list. Furthermore, I stuck to the list, except I had forgotten to write one item ON the list...so I came home with five items. So far, so good!
DD & I discovered the new recycling dumpster (full-size dumpster JUST for recyclables) at our normal recycling bin (too tiny for our HOA) location that we have been waiting for!!! We were both excited since they now accept all plastics with #1 through #7 (plus a bunch of other stuff). We will be even more excited when the dumpster closer to us is swapped out (currently two trash dumpsters reside there, will be one trash and one recycling)!
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Jan 20 - I worked on our finances and put a large stack of paper in our "shred" pile, which will be recycled. I also SAVED paper, envelopes, and stamps by efiling our taxes this year.
Jan 21 - I worked on my house project list for the year. I had typed out a long version somewhere around here and decided I needed to get busy on that list, but it was too long and overwhelming (4 pages in Word!). So, I took the time to streamline it visually (more items ended up on the list) and print it out (single side of one sheet, easy to read, organized). Then, I did something on that list!
Jan 22 - Today I tackled a mental challenge I had been putting off for months. I invited my dad (retired electrician with lots of construction experience) over to show me what it would take to install a tankless hot water heater. I wrote the items down that I then needed to research and then I did the research!!!
I can now cross that off my list from yesterday. LOL It isn't happening for us due to how much work it is for our situation, so now I know we need to find a suitable replacement for our existing tank heater and what to look for. I also removed the old, ICKY faucet aerators from all three bathroom sinks (heavily encrusted with calcium and other mineral deposits, not an easy task to remove). When I was at the store buying replacements (after 8.5 years
), I checked on the tank heater to begin that research. I also tried to find four other items on my house project list, but that store didn't have what I wanted. I did find the aerators, though, and they are on each faucet.
Lastly, there is an e-waste event coming up at the school nearby and I asked DH if there were any such items hanging around even though we just dropped off a box of (non-working) electronics earlier in the month. He said yes, my OLD clamshell iBook wasn't being used and we no longer need it, so I asked for the specs and started to list it on freecycle since it still worked last we checked. Meanwhile, DH was clearing data off the hard drive. Hmmm... it no longer works at all, so all the related "stuff" and the laptop are in a bag ready for the e-waste event on Saturday.
While I am not exactly following the "one drawer a day" challenge nor the "one room" challenge, I sure am accomplishing a lot more this month than any other month I've done these types of challenges!!! It is all the little things I've been ignoring for various reasons and it sure feels GOOD to just get them all DONE!!!