Today I have set out with a new mission for around the house.
I want to start a household binder. Nothing fancy, nothing store bought, just something I can make at home to keep our things together. I haven't thought much about how I will accomplish this quite yet, but I thing the tabs I want to include are:
menu's/recipes
grocery lists
Chores
Budget Info
Holiday/Birthday section
Important Phone Numbers
To do Lists
Kids Info
Medical Info
This will be first on my list of items to accomplish. After that, I think I want to do a School Binder, Home Binder, Garden Binder, Craft Binder and then make an "I'm Bored" binder for the kids.
We'll see ... I need to finish this first binder before I can think about these other things. I think the next few days will find me gathering recipes, shopping lists, creating spreadsheets, gathering all the important phone numbers into one place, typing lots of things and also trying to make it look pretty! That is just as important to me afterall! LOL!
Here's hoping if I spend a lot of time working on it now, it will get easier in the future. Afterall, come October, dh and I will both be working part-time and there is a chance I might also do some part-time work come November/December to help kick-start our savings and get the budget stuff under control! So if that does occur, I really want to get things a lot more organized around here!
Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
On a roll over here ...
Over here at the skipping house, we are on a roll with this whole "clean out the clutter" campaign that I am running.
Today we tackled the toys. Now, we just did the toys in April, but it has been clear to dh and I that we needed to do more in the toy area. Mostly because we just feel like in general our kids have too many things and secondly between now and December 25 we will have a birthday for all 3 of our kids and Christmas to deal with. Our families are so extremely generous - which we are grateful for, but sometimes I wish they would scale back as well. My kids are given so many toys. They can't possibly play with them all. I'd rather have money for the college fund or really, I'd just rather they spent time with them. Wouldn't that be the nicest gift of all - a trip to the movies, or taking them to the park. My kids are simple - they don't need much truthfully. I think they would rather have time/attention over things. The trouble is now my kids are used to getting a ton of things and they know which relative to ask for all the things from. They are smart. They see advertising and think that they want them right then.
Anyway, we did such a good job today! I am extremely proud of my girls. We took 5 boxes of toys and got it down to 2 1/2. We emptied out a small bookcase and left a bit of space in the another bookcase as well.
Interestingly enough, when we got towards the end of the sort, my 7 year old out of the blue shouted "Oh no!" I thought maybe she was missing a toy, but no. She told me I didn't take pictures when we started and what in the world would I share on my blog! LOL! I laughed so hard when she said that, and so at the end, we pulled out the camera to show you our work:
The two boxes of kept toys (okay, so they are a bit overflowing - so were 3 of the original 5 we started with LOL!)
The first bookcase. All 4 shelves were packed with books earlier. Now, one shelf is empty and two shelves have spare room!
The other two bookcases. One is completely empty now! Woo-hoo! And the other one looks a lot more organized than when we started.
These are the toys I kept for Little Man. This basket was not completely empty when we started but I knew I wanted to keep what I kept for him to fit in this basket and it does. Very nice =)
Here is what we decided to donate:
We also had one bag of garbage to throw away.
Now, we didn't go though anything in the girls' room yet. So we still need to do that. And we could probably get rid of a few more books if I pushed them, but after all they did earlier today, I don't want to push them.
This week I will begin to go through my items and starting to part with some of them. ::sigh:: If I can do it as well as my girls did their work today then it will all turn out wonderful in the end!
Today we tackled the toys. Now, we just did the toys in April, but it has been clear to dh and I that we needed to do more in the toy area. Mostly because we just feel like in general our kids have too many things and secondly between now and December 25 we will have a birthday for all 3 of our kids and Christmas to deal with. Our families are so extremely generous - which we are grateful for, but sometimes I wish they would scale back as well. My kids are given so many toys. They can't possibly play with them all. I'd rather have money for the college fund or really, I'd just rather they spent time with them. Wouldn't that be the nicest gift of all - a trip to the movies, or taking them to the park. My kids are simple - they don't need much truthfully. I think they would rather have time/attention over things. The trouble is now my kids are used to getting a ton of things and they know which relative to ask for all the things from. They are smart. They see advertising and think that they want them right then.
Anyway, we did such a good job today! I am extremely proud of my girls. We took 5 boxes of toys and got it down to 2 1/2. We emptied out a small bookcase and left a bit of space in the another bookcase as well.
Interestingly enough, when we got towards the end of the sort, my 7 year old out of the blue shouted "Oh no!" I thought maybe she was missing a toy, but no. She told me I didn't take pictures when we started and what in the world would I share on my blog! LOL! I laughed so hard when she said that, and so at the end, we pulled out the camera to show you our work:
The two boxes of kept toys (okay, so they are a bit overflowing - so were 3 of the original 5 we started with LOL!)
The first bookcase. All 4 shelves were packed with books earlier. Now, one shelf is empty and two shelves have spare room!
The other two bookcases. One is completely empty now! Woo-hoo! And the other one looks a lot more organized than when we started.
These are the toys I kept for Little Man. This basket was not completely empty when we started but I knew I wanted to keep what I kept for him to fit in this basket and it does. Very nice =)
Here is what we decided to donate:
We also had one bag of garbage to throw away.
Now, we didn't go though anything in the girls' room yet. So we still need to do that. And we could probably get rid of a few more books if I pushed them, but after all they did earlier today, I don't want to push them.
This week I will begin to go through my items and starting to part with some of them. ::sigh:: If I can do it as well as my girls did their work today then it will all turn out wonderful in the end!
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
First steps ..
Monday I wrote about learning to live with less. I even said I was going to get rid of things in my house.
We started today - the entire family (well, minus the little guy). We went through our videos. They now all fit into one spot. So when we want to watch a movie, we can see all that own at one glance.
(well, the bottom shelf might have to be moved below because the little guy thinks the movies there are now toys, but I'm hoping after a few days he'll lose interest and stop trying to open them all up! But, I won't have to move them because they don't all fit and that's exciting!) I would like to point out, there is a bit of room there to grow. We could acquire a few more videos and fit them in nicely.
I should have taken before pictures, but I didn't think about it. Needless to say this cabinet:
was full of videos before. The few in there now are blank tapes to be recorded on or homemade movies we don't want the kids getting into by accident. Both shelves had too many movies on them and they were all kind of thrown in there.
Here is the pile of movies that will be going to good will soon (and in case you are wondering why they look oh so neat, well, that was dh's way to "stack" them up. I think that was his way to toss them in a pile LOL!)
The kids did a good job of really picking movies to toss! And they had to both agree to toss them for them to end up in the pile, but I was proud of the girls. They got rid of the right amount.
I do think that this was a good item to start with. One because the whole family was involved. Two because after we were done it was nice to step back and just see it all so nice, in one spot, with no digging involved to find movies anymore. I mean, really, it just felt good! And now I have an empty cabinet in the house - which is completely nice because we've been trying to find a nice place to keep our library books. I'm pretty sure we found it tonight!
Anyway, that's my first step. Things that need to be done next:
kids clothes
kids toys
kids books
adult books
my fabric stash
my yarn stash
kitchen items
magazines
craft supplies
linens
Here's hoping we can get it done!
We started today - the entire family (well, minus the little guy). We went through our videos. They now all fit into one spot. So when we want to watch a movie, we can see all that own at one glance.
(well, the bottom shelf might have to be moved below because the little guy thinks the movies there are now toys, but I'm hoping after a few days he'll lose interest and stop trying to open them all up! But, I won't have to move them because they don't all fit and that's exciting!) I would like to point out, there is a bit of room there to grow. We could acquire a few more videos and fit them in nicely.
I should have taken before pictures, but I didn't think about it. Needless to say this cabinet:
was full of videos before. The few in there now are blank tapes to be recorded on or homemade movies we don't want the kids getting into by accident. Both shelves had too many movies on them and they were all kind of thrown in there.
Here is the pile of movies that will be going to good will soon (and in case you are wondering why they look oh so neat, well, that was dh's way to "stack" them up. I think that was his way to toss them in a pile LOL!)
The kids did a good job of really picking movies to toss! And they had to both agree to toss them for them to end up in the pile, but I was proud of the girls. They got rid of the right amount.
I do think that this was a good item to start with. One because the whole family was involved. Two because after we were done it was nice to step back and just see it all so nice, in one spot, with no digging involved to find movies anymore. I mean, really, it just felt good! And now I have an empty cabinet in the house - which is completely nice because we've been trying to find a nice place to keep our library books. I'm pretty sure we found it tonight!
Anyway, that's my first step. Things that need to be done next:
kids clothes
kids toys
kids books
adult books
my fabric stash
my yarn stash
kitchen items
magazines
craft supplies
linens
Here's hoping we can get it done!
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