Last Weeks Results

Ok, I'm a horrible blogger. But I swear, I'm going to get better! Now that Dad has finished his radiation treatment, I have more time in my day and can better organize my schedule.

Last week I decided I had to get my Christmas list together. Just making a list of who to buy for and what to buy would be too simple. You see, I have this tendency to buy gifts throughout the year with no idea who the gift will be for until this time of year. For example, I found two quilt stands, new in the box, on sale at a thrift store for $10 each over the summer. So, anyways....I had the majority of gifts inside 1 tote and stacked on top of it in my attic space. When I opened the attic door, I discovered Jordan had stacked Kris' belongings right inside the door. Add the garage sale stuff, assorted Christmas decorations and other crap, and I had a job in front of me.

I began by pulling out everything:



Okay, I didn't pull out everything. I did leave Kris' bed, luggage, a kitchen chair, cat carriers and the Christmas tree. But I did organize all of that stuff. Then, I began condensing the other stuff. First and foremost was Kris' belongings, followed by Christmas decorations. Once I had that crap put away, I just had to make a list of the gifts I had already purchased. Here's a lovely picture of Jordan's room after everything was put back in:



Jordan had made mention that he wanted his desk (in the back right of his room) moved out so it was usable.





Now that the attic space was clean and organized and Jordan's room was all set, I decided to attack Jordan's closet too! I wish I had this much energy every day! You'll be shocked at the difference of before/after...and it only took me about 30 minutes to do!!! Trust me, it was bad! It looks fabulous now!!!





The rest of the week SUCKED! Dad's radiation was supposed to end Wednesday, but they extended it for yet another day, just in case. That just depressed the hell out of me! Then Friday came with no trips to radiation but a boat load of homework to do. All weekend I played catch up.

It's now a new week. The plan is a little cleaning and a lot of homework every day.

Today: I ran errands shopping for deals at Walmart and Walgreens, you can find those on my personal blog. I busted my butt trying to clean as soon as I got home, and then started homework. Let's hope the rest of the week goes as well!

Bad 'manda

I am a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad PCCX-er. We are very nearly at the mid-point - you hear that, people, halfway done! * panic* - and the only pccx related things I have done are the inside of the freezer and the inside of one small dresser, oh, and most of an empty hallway (walls and floor). *hanging head in shame* I had the house looking fairly decent (if one didn't look too closely), and then I had back-to-back Bad Days this week and it's back to being a wreck. Possibly some areas not as wrecked as before, but still...

I'm bi-polar. I also have arthritis and other issues. So my mental status swings from depressed and useless to happy and ambitious, and my physical status swings from nearly crippled to not so bad. On an exceptionally good day the ups match, and on a particularly bad day the downs match. This week was one of those bad days...actually two in a row. On the plus side that is now behind me for a while, and things should be looking up. If I'm really lucky I won't have another downer until after PCCX is all over. Yeah, that'll happen. *snort*

Anyway...the house is trashed so one might think that this weekend's goal would be to get it picked up. Not so, Grasshopper. It's a weekend, which means everyone's home and in the way. It also means trips to town and shopping, which in turn means prep and follow-up and coupons to clip and file and mail and... So my goal for the rest of this weekend is to get ALL computer and paper related work done (as much as possible) before bedtime Sunday night. Correction: before NIC and ICA Sunday night, and I suppose Challenge too. So that's everything done by, say, 7:30pm tomorrow (I like to start late so I can skip commercials). The biggest thing on my side is that there's almost no shopping to be done tomorrow morning. Partly because grocery money is low, being the end of the month, and partly because there aren't any great deals at the store this week. There's a very few deals at other stores that maybe I might want to pick up if I wanted to store-hop, but I really don't so I'll just pass on them. That saves a ton in terms of time and effort. Shoot, I wouldn't even have to go if it weren't for the weekly requirement of newspapers and dog food and milk. What I wouldn't give for a store here that carried the big city paper on Sundays.

So much of the writing and coupon filing and such tonight and tomorrow, general pickup and getting back to order Monday, one room to be determined Tuesday, another Wednesday, another Thursday, panic about Halloween costumes Friday, Halloween carnival Saturday, back to shopping and writing Sunday. Sounds like a plan. Keep an eye out for mid-point challenges to be posted here and elsewhere this weekend.

Oh! I almost forgot - again - that I really, really need to take some pictures for holiday cards. That will definitely be this weekend as well.

What was I thinking?????

I am such a glutton for punishment and I really have the desire to have a clean and organized home, I really do.....BUT, I can't seem to get it all together AT THE SAME TIME *snort* I am a 1 step forward, 9 steps back kinda girl apparently, lol. I did manage to get all my coupons clipped, organized, sorted and shared last night....this used to be part of my Sunday routine and beleive it or not helped me get on track for the week, when I did it regularly.

On the other hand...........I have a 60th surprise birthday party for my dad that is only 1/2 planned, homeschool with dd every day, hair cuts for both myself and dd, eyebrow waxing, family holiday portraits, sign language class for dd, pe for dd, art for dd, a community yard sale that I am in charge of, weekly client work, a field trip to the pumpkin patch, shopping for birthday decorations, meal planning and preparing, quarterly payroll returns, personal tax prep, unpacking, cleaning for said surprise birthday party this weekend. Ummmmmm, where oh where do I put in pccx and going potty????????????????????????????

One tada and then I am outie....Dd and I sat in her room for 5+ hours on Saturday and cleaned out her closet, under her bed, all her nooks and crannies. She has bins for all her toys, but enjoys irritating me by putting stuff where it doesn't belong....the only thing left to do in there is hang her wall art, hang her window treatments and go thru her closet to purge smallish clothes and summer wear. I also managed to scrub down, clean and polish our stainless steel gas grill. I took all the grill grates....8 peices in all and then I used stainless steel cleaner on the outside. Saturday was wrapped up with trimming and watering all hedges out front and cleaning up the scraps. OOH, OOH, OOH....I guesss that cleaning the grill and trimming the hedges could be on PCCX under "winterizing".....hmmmm, I definately need to check that out, lol.

Tomorrow will be spent on client work, clearing off my desk, credenza and filing cabinets and hanging clothes back in my closet. After losing 3 dress sizes, I was forced *gasp* lol to buy new clothes and they are ALL on my bed....my closet is completely empty, so that MUST be taken care of tomorrow.

Monday Mania

Yesterday went off pretty well. I got the majority of the house in order enough that if someone came over, I wouldn't be totally embarrassed. I didn't get around to vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, etc but I could live with that for a day. I'm hoping to accomplish all of that this afternoon after Dad's radiation appointment. I did get through a LOT of paperwork and sold my college books back to Barnes and Noble and got them packaged for shipment to the post office.

It's 9:45 a.m. and I've already dropped them off at the post office - not bad for only getting 4 hours of sleep LOL I don't know why, but I just was not tired last night. Maybe it had something to do with the chocolate that I ate around 8 p.m. (I'm referring to an entire bag of Hostess chocolate doughnuts, yes I ate the entire bag). I'm giving up on my weight loss efforts until after Dad's radiation is complete and I have time to get back on the treadmill. So shush....

I didn't get to clip newspaper coupons yesterday, which really bummed me out. While the lack of the job saved me a lot of time, I really like clipping my weekly coupons! From now on, I'll make sure I get to the store much earlier than 2 p.m.

Today's plans:

Post office - Done
Dad radiation
Maple syrup farm
IGA for Totinos pizza rolls sale
WHB (Weekly Home Blessing)
At least 30 minutes of pccx - room to be determined later. I'll post before/after pics of whatever job I choose.

The Calm Before the Storm

I know I haven't been good about posting my blogs as well as I should. But, I have a really good reason: I'm swamped!

Friday I finally completed two of my classes: Geography and Psychology. Last week I had 2 projects to complete as well as 3 tests and other miscellaneous assignments, so I was on a major deadline and everything else had to wait. I did just enough housework so that the house didn't look like a F5 tornado hit it, now its more like an F3.

I'm still taking Dad to radiation (a 2.5 hour loss of prime time energy each day) but he should wrap up his treatments around the 28th of this month. Nearly 8 weeks of radiation is just cruel. I want to cry every time some new person comes in and only has 3 weeks of treatments.

Today will be basic house cleaning, laundry and shopping. Fortunately I don't have major shopping to do, so it won't take too long. As I stated before, house cleaning and laundry will be a huge effort.


So, my new classes don't begin until the 26th (Business Ethics and Chemistry). Which means more time to clean this week. I'll be working super hard - as in trying to do a room every day or two. I will post daily...

Part 1 of my dungeon

Before & After Photos of the Coupons - Part of my dungeon

The first photo is of all the MONTHS, yes months of inserts that I had accumulated as well as coupons I picked up along the way or received in trains or from other group members. There was NOT semblance of organization, they were scattered everywhere and I had no idea where in the heck the ones were that I actually needed to use. My daughter went to her dad's this weekend and I spent a total of 13 hours on organizing the heaps of the mess. (4 hours on Thursday night, 6 hours on Friday and 3 hours on Sunday)

First, I had to go thru all the uncut inserts and determine which were expired (sadly, that was alot). This was approximately 9 1/2 " of inserts to go thru and does not include the enormous stack that was already clipped. Then I clipped all the good dated coupons. After getting them all clipped, I sorted them into stacks of coupons I need/use and ones that I will send to friends and members of my coupon groups that can use them. I tackled the "other" coupons for the groups first and grouped all like coupons together. I keep these in a bin with cards labeled by month. I chose to do this by month because when we send out coupon trains in the group, we must make sure that the coupons aren't short dated to go around to 4 people. I keep the current month first and then in month order work back. The coupons photo'd in the very back of the bin are either NON expiring or expire 12/2010 or LATER. Yes, I grabbed an entire stack of organic coupons. I don't see them often, use them when I can and I experience NO SHAME in helping myself and my friends :D

Once that was accomplished, I did the happy dance, not only for completing 1/2 of that task, but also because I got to take fling points for all those wasted coupons :) I "auctioned" off several stacks of the unwanted coupons to the girls (the collaborators of this blog) and I think we all thoroughly enjoyed it...we kinda felt like we were at an auction, lol. Next began the task of organizing all my personal coupons. I do the organizing for those a little differently. I organize my personal coupons by "type" of coupon. For example....beverages, breakfast items, bread, ice cream, frozen, frozen veggies, medicine, deoderant, paper products...you get the idea I hope. I shop the sales and I stockpile, so I often times have multiples of coupons and actually welcome them from friends, neighbors, family and fellow couponers. :) If I can get items for free or close to free that we won't personally use, I donate them to women's shelters, pet shelters, churches and even victims of wild fires, tornadoes and hurricanes. I paperclip all like coupons together, with the earliest expiration date first. I also like to have each variety of coupon clipped together, meaning.....I have a section for soups, but I have all the chunky campbell's coupons together, all healthy choice campbell's coupons together, all cream soup campbell's coupons together, etc. That's probably a bit anal, but if I see a sale, I can grab the coupons quickly and take them with me.

The final step in completing the coupon organizing is to organize my bin by ailes in the store. I have not done that yet and am waiting when I can leave my daughter at home to walk the aisle at kroger. I do shop at other stores, but mainly kroger, and I could actually probably just do this at home since I am smart enough to figure out that all cheeses, milk, yogurt, butter, cookie dough, etc are all in the same section, same with all the frozens, canned goods, etc. :)

I think I mentioned I have several BIG issues with my dungeons in trying to get unpacked, but I am happy that I was able to get this large task completed although it was only a VERY VERY small, minute dent in the big picture. I went shopping Saturday afternoon and it was so nice to look at the ads, make my list and pull my coupons....took me 30 minutes tops for this weeks shopping at 5 stores. YAY me!