Don't forget the break!!!

So yesterday I hit a wall... i kinda forgot that I had not left the house since Sunday morning and it suddenly got to me. I was miserable! Well my wonderful husband and I decided that it was time then to go spend our Lowe's gift card from Chirstmas on curtains for our bedroom. We had a blast picking them out and then went to the chinese buffet for dinner. I felt so much better and lesson learned... LEAVE the house even when you are in full-on clean the house mode!

Today I started again refreshed! I hit our bedroom... that is one scarey place. I felt so overwhelmed when I first got in there. There were piles of "stuff" in every corner and I did not know where to start. I decided to grab a trash bag and a box. Bag to toss and the box to donate. I then plopped myself in the corner right by the door and started stifting through the piles. I found so many things from our wedding in there it was unreal. We got married in July and after all the fuss, there is all this STUFF left over. I found the markers from the sign mat (now how many purple thin sharpies does one person need? Not four,) ribbon (which I am giving to a coworker who is a big crafter,) the old programs (these were hard for me to part with as my husband designed them, but after much thought I decided to pop two in my memory box and toss the rest,) picture frames (we got like 20 as gifts between the two showers and the actual wedding day so I saved about 5 that I know we will use and decided to donate the rest,) and more of this and that. I worked my way around the room like this and then hit the closet. Oh my! I have all of these awesome sweaters that have the wide necks (cow necks) and they just do not stay on the hangers. Well I must of had about 15 that had fallen to the floor and I never picked up. So, I picked up each one and decided wheather it should be kept or not and slowly put them away. Then to the flat surfaces. Now I have a problem with flat surfaces... I cover them almost instantly. I went through all of them and cleaned them with my green clean and the reorganized them in a much more meaningful way. My plan is to do this every Saturday from now on. In hopes that with a once a week run over they will remain clean and orderly.

When all was said and done, I had two bags of trash and a box of items to donate. I also had a beautiful room that is all ready for my husband to hang our brand new curtains in! I feel good about it:-)

Today's lesson.... don't forget the breaks! No matter how hard you are working, nonstop work will end in misary. I quick break and run out of the hosue will fix it and you will accomplish more!

Success is in the eye of the beholder

Yesterday was my dinning room and living room day. In all honesty, I did not finish them, but I did wipe all of the walls, windows and baseboards with green clean and warm water. This took longer than I had expected. But, wow was it worth it! I didn't think my walls and whatnots were that dirty, but when I was done, the water was black and so was the white rag that I had started with! Now I could look at this as a failure over the past year, but I choose to see the success in the now clean walls! Just depends on how you look at things. I also did not complete the rooms yesterday, but I got a very good start and will be working on them today.

I am not able to get a ton done today as I got the emergency call from the sister saying that she needed someone to watch my 2 year old nephew. Now being a kindergarten teacher, you can probably guess that I love kids, so I jumped at the chance! He is napping now and as soon as I am done here, I am going to finsih these last two rooms. Tomorrow moving on to zone 1, the front porch and dinning room (hey I thought the dinning room was in zone 5... oh well, looks like I am still on track!) Go me! Just looked up the zones and I had all the numbers wrong, but whatever, that is so NOT the important thing. For anyone who is wondering though...
zone 1 Entrance, porch, dinning room
zone 2 Kitchen
zone 3 The bathroom and one other room (I do the laundry room at this time)
zone 4 Master bedroom
zone 5 Living room

My words of wisdom (not that I am all knowing or anything) from today... look for where you did succeed and not at where you didn't. If you can look for the positives, life is just so MUCH happier! Plus, we have our first follower... didn't think ANYONE would follow, but yea!

Getting a start on the right foot

So if I am going to be the best most organized working wife in 2011, I must start on the right foot. This means that since I am off from work this week, I am going to take on the amazing task of cleaning my house from top to bottom. My thinking is that if I start out on the "right" clean foot, that I will have a better chance of success... we shall see.
To help guide me along my giant task, I have called on the wonderful guidance of the Flylady. If you have not heard of her, you must look her up! Her main point is that cleaning need not be an all day horriable task, but instead a simple task that is taken care of each day for only a few minutes. Now, for the past year or so, I have dabbled in her teachings, but my new goal is to follow her to a T! To get my jump start, I am modifing her concepts. The Flylady has your house broken in to five zones or sections and has a detailed cleaning list of how to clean each zone. Now, she has you work on one zone for an etire week every 5 weeks. I am going to use this as a guide and complete each list for an entire zone in one day. This means that by the time I go back to work on Monday, my entire house will be clean!
Yesterday I went to town on the kitchen. I blared my lively pop music and started cleaning area after area. I would take a small section and remove EVERYTHING. After the area was cleared, I would scrub with warm soapy water and if anything was not coming up, I would go at it with an old toothbrush. After the area was cleaned, I would return the items in a more organized manner. The biggest change was to a shelf that is above my sink. This shelf was orginally slated to hold my cookbooks, notepads, and pens. As time went on it became the dumping ground for anything tiny. I found a ton of batteries, scrunchies, a necklace, and about 5 of my husbands little pocket knives. I returned all of these objects to their "homes" and reorganized the cookbooks. It looks wonderful and I was amazed at what a difference this one little shelf made to the look of my entire kitchen!
Yesterday was obviously a huge success and I hope that today will be too! Today I am working in zone 5 the living and dinning rooms. My plan is to wash all of the walls, switch plates and base boards with warm soapy water, dust and wash (if needed) all of the kickknacks, clean the windows, remove clutter, and vaccum (not just the middle of the room, but move the furniture, and even hit the corners. Wish me luck!!!!

So we begin...

I bought my first home last October and got married on July 17th, 2010. I want to be the best wife and a more organized person in general. This blog is a diary of my efforts to be just that... an organized wife! Now as a full-time kindergarten teacher, that can be a tricky feat for most of the year, but I am going to try and you get to come along with me on the ride...