So I was talking to some of the girls the other day about my decluttering for my Memorial Day weekend garage sale.  Because I have such a headstart, I'm limiting myself to going through 10 items per day.  A box does not have to be completed in a day.  The attic does not have to be completed in a day.  I'm grabbing a box from storage and sorting into 4 piles: Keep, Donate, Sell, Trash  (Note: This is NOT 10 items per category. JUST 10 items per day) 

Keep items are packed away if I can (for my future move) or simply cleaned and put away.

Donate items are put into a box and any time I go into town, I drop it off at the charity donation center.

Sell items are priced, which can take more time to research online, but then put in the garage "staging" area for my future sale. 

Why am I telling you this?  Because it was pointed out that in one month, that's 300 items!  Just try it, you'll be amazed how quickly you can sort through 10 items!

1/2 Month Check In

Well, it's the middle of the month and I haven't even posted pictures. I've had the pictures taken since the first week, I just haven't gotten them off the camera. Talk about lazy!!

Anyway, as far as the update. I'm rather embarrassed because all that I've done so far is have the kids undecorate the Christmas tree. It's still sitting naked in the game room, though. The toys in there have been picked up and spilled about over and over since the beginning too. Other than that, nothing looks different, unfortunately.

I did find out that in the middle of February, I'll be having a group of teens over for a game night for my daughter so I have to get busy working on this room, plus the rest of the house to make everything presentable.

It's time to kick it into high gear and get some things accomplished. Hopefully, I can do more in the next 2 weeks than I did in the last.

Clean up, aisle 7

Homeless produce + binless toy shelf + dollar store bins = personal produce department.  Special thanks to Kim, Jamie, and Teresa for the brainstorming and outright idea.

I need to get a move on

I'm having a hard enough time getting through the day-to-day so I haven't even looked at the back pages.  So today I brought one of the office tasks forward as one of the daily challenges: clean an office (or playroom, or similar) wall, ceiling to floor including molding.  I didn't do it today of course, but I gave us all weekend to complete it for bonus points.so, just for grins, here are a couple of pictures of my wall before, and hopefully by Sunday I'll have an after picture that actually looks better.  Any ideas how to get the blue, um, marker? I think? off of badly painted paneling?

EGADS! What happened to my desk?

So my desk area has become the catch all for mail, school papers, jewelry making supplies and other misc papers. Everything has taken over to the point there's not a clear surface to be had.

I've taken before pics of it, and will try to take after pics when I finish it. I forgot after pics of my house but will try to get the desk pics up.

I did something right

I wrote the new program specifically to encourage prioritizing and doing the important things over the piddly things.  And you know what?  It works.  It's come back to kick me in the you-know-where.  I did plenty of work today.  Hours, even.  Stuff on my list, stuff that needed to be done.  But it wasn't the stuff that *really* needed to be done.  The things that I had decided this morning were the most important.  So by dinnertime I'd worked all day but was at barely 65% of goal.  And it's a modest goal y'all, really.  I "wasted" the entire day working on less important things, and it shows.

But that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

Checking in with nothing to say

It hasn't been much of a week.  According to my self-imposed schedule I was supposed to write this yesterday but since no one else would know that except that I just told you....well, let's just say it's not a big deal.  Although it did kill my streak of blogging every day.  Oh well.

About my house, since that's the whole point of this particular blog, I can't say a whole lot.  I have been making a concerted effort to keep my room picked up after Chris cleaned the heck out of it not that long ago, so that's good.  On the other hand, after ALL that work writing the new point system and making a lovely POA to go with it, I have made goal exactly once in the last week.  Oddly enough, if I don't get up and clean stuff each day I don't get many points, even if I spend the day "productively" sitting at my computer.  I can't blame the system since a) I wrote it, and b) that's what it's supposed to do.

One thing I have yet to truly understand, is how I can log such a small percentage of time doing useful things.  Around 11am the other day I'd been up for 5 hours, I'd been working or at least feeling like I was working almost all of that time, but I only had about 2 1/2 hours marked as cleaning or writing or whatever.  That's something I'll have to work on.

In the end, we're week 1 into the new year and while I don't really see progress I also don't see much backsliding into the pit, so that's good.  Right?  How was your first week?