Making Progress with the Decluttering!

Mental wanderings....

My friend is hosting a multi-family garage sale on Friday, so I'm making some progress with the decluttering. I delivered some large pieces to her house this afternoon.  The children are all contributing toys and games.  I've found a wider path through the laundry room.  (I'll post more pictures soon as the room continues its transformation from a cluttered cave to a bright, cheery, useful space.) So far, I've taken two youth desks, a changing table, a trike, and a nice L.L. Bean Back Pack.  It's so cute--dragonfly pattern.  I wish it was my size! (Stop!!  The clutter must leave.  No emotional attachment to stuff is allowed.) The kitchen counter is full of Barbie dolls and decorative pictures.  I think we'll have a pretty good number of items to contribute to the sale.  And if we make a little money, all the better!

Tomorrow is Independence Day.  I love my country.  I'm grateful for the freedoms we have and I hope they aren't taken away by the current administration.  Mine is not a political blog, but I will say that I would like a little less government and a lot better economy.

My daughter is off to run a summer series youth race.  Last year she did the race every week, but this will be her first time this summer since she had a scheduling conflict with another activity that wrapped up last week.  Her dad took her, so this is the first time she's has run without me in a few months.  I will have to go for my 2-miler when they get home.  I hope she does well--it's rather hot this evening.

I starting putting together a planning notebook yesterday.  I had wanted to do one for years.  I tried the FlyLady method, but I could not seem to make it happen.  The big binder was just too big to carry around, and if I couldn't carry it, I wouldn't use it.  I have been reading Confessions of an Organized Homemaker by Deniece Schofield.  I know that many of the principals in her book are similar to the FlyLady advice.  One chapter suggested using a binder that holds 5.5" x 8.5" paper.  I have been using the Cozi Family Calender and it has worked wonder fully, except when I need to make appointments away from home.  I don't have a smart phone, and I didn't want to manually recreate my calendar that's so thorough in Cozi.  I realized I could sync the Cozi calendar to my Microsoft Outlook calendar on the computer, then print calendar pages for my binder.  Brilliant!  Of course, I could not find reinforced printer paper in  5.5" x 8.5", but Staples cut a ream of printer paper in half and I can three-hole punch it to fit in my pretty new binder.  My printer was acting up a bit yesterday, so printing front to back was a challenge.  However, once I have the planner set up, I'll only need to do a few pages at a time, which won't be a big deal.


So, in a nutshell, I hope to have my planner set up and the laundry room organized by the end of July.  That way systems will be in place before school starts.