Category: cleaning

Clean Up

I love this quote, because it suits me perfectly right now. I’ve been on a cleaning-out and organizing kick lately at home, and it’s been inspired by changes I have made for myself, for my life. Instead of dread for a mundane chore, I feel excited to work on these projects, to make improvements and upgrades all around, inside and out.

This week, I am focusing on cleaning out and organizing my shoes. I remember my mom having stacks and stacks of shoe boxes in their bedroom, and we took shoe shopping together quite seriously. Is there such a thing as too many shoes? Of course not, but I suppose there does come a point that the shoe collection needs to be corralled, pared down, and organized.

I ordered some shoe organizers, and at some point this week, I need to make time to really evaluate whether I wear every pair of shoes, sandals, and boots that I own, and part with the ones not worth finding storage space for. Then I’m going to get seriously organized, keep the ones I wear the most, like my running shoes, in an easy-to-grab rack in the closet.

Up next will be jewelry (bursting out of my jewelry box), purses (um, I like to call it a collection, not hoarding), and my make-up drawer (yes, I really do need 20 lipsticks and half a dozen mascaras). I’ve already cleaned out a lot of clothes but want to do one more sweep to yank out any stragglers I missed.

Step by step, it will all fall together to a much more organized, tidy, and streamlined home. I need to be more mindful of what I add to the closet from now on, too, and make sure it truly adds value to my life before I add it to the collection.

I never thought I’d be excited about cleaning, but here I am, living my wild and crazy life, ha ha. I have made so many positive changes this year that I just feel like a good clean-up and glow-up is only appropriate at home, as well.

Spring Cleaning

A few years ago, I started a personal tradition of spring cleaning. Not just some casual dusting and mopping. That’s for amateurs! I’m talking a serious purge of every square inch of the house. I start at one end of the house, go through each closet, drawer, and cabinet, and empty it. I go through every item, one piece at a time, decide if we are keeping it, tossing it, or donating it. I clean the drawer, vacuum the closet, then replace whatever we are keeping, but organized and neat.

This year, I stocked up on matching baskets and containers so that as everything went back into closets or cabinets, it all looks nice and tidy. Even the laundry room shelves have cute little matching baskets now.

I don’t do all this just to indulge my OCD impulses, though. There is a method to my madness. It’s amazing what you can accumulate in just one year! The only way to keep it under control, remember what we have, and eliminate the clutter is to make a conscious effort to look at all of it, one piece at a time, and really think about what we need and what we can give to someone else or toss out.

I am almost finished. I went through my make-up drawer over the weekend and tossed some lipsticks because I don’t really need the same baby pink shade in 10 different brands. (At least I am consistent!) Next I want to go through all my jewelry, which will take a while.

When I am done with that, though, why stop there?

There are more kinds of clutter than just what accumulates in a house. I would like to really take stock of some habits, thought processes, and behaviors that I should consider clutter and junk too. Why keep it? I need to hold those to the same standard: if it’s not serving a useful and healthy purpose, then throw it away!

Happy Monday

It rained almost the entire weekend here.  Sounds like a crappy weekend, right?  Nope!  I was thrilled.  It gave me a perfect excuse to skip yard work.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate yard work or manual labor.  I’m not afraid to get dirty or sweaty.  Almost every weekend since we bought our house, I have spent the afternoons in the yard somewhere, pulling weeds, mowing grass, planting flowers, trimming, etc.  But I won’t lie and say it wasn’t wonderful to have a break this past weekend.

It was a treat to be snuggled up inside with my husband, and just enjoy the day.  We braved the rain one evening and went to dinner with my older stepson, and we ended up just sitting at the table long after we were finished eating, talking and telling stories.

On Sunday, I hated the idea of getting some housework done, but unless little cleaning fairies were going to materialize out of thin air, then I figured it was up to me.  As soon as my husband saw me sweeping the floors, he grabbed the mop bucket and started filling it up.  We teased each other as we got the cleaning done, and in no time the whole house was swept, mopped, vacuumed, and dusted.  Done!  Time to relax!

It was hard to get up this morning and get back to the grind.  My husband didn’t want me to get out of bed, but my cat had a very different opinion on that, since he wanted his breakfast right NOW.   (My cat has joined me on a diet, after his last weigh-in at the vet, so he is not a particularly pleased feline lately).

It’s going to be a busy week, so I sat down with my planner yesterday and scheduled my workouts for the week.  I told my husband that one reason it’s been so hard to get back to working out is that I expect myself to leap back into running, Insanity, all the hard-core, intense, all-out workouts.  And I’m not ready for that again yet.  So this week, as long as I am moving, I don’t care what the workout is!

I was pleasantly surprised when I looked up my Beachbody on Demand account and saw that it doesn’t expire until September.  For some reason I thought it expired this month.  So I scrolled through and picked out a few workouts that look fun and a bit less intense than Insanity, something to just get me started again, get consistent again.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend too, and happy Monday!

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Organizing

A co-worker recently told me, “You are getting so skinny!”  Well, I wouldn’t exactly call myself skinny, but I know what she means.  It’s pretty obvious now that I have lost a good bit of weight.  In fact, I am thinking that 20 more pounds to reach the weight goal I had set for myself may be too much.  I will evaluate how I look and feel after 10 pounds instead.

Over the weekend, I tried on my goal-weight jeans again.  I can button and zip them, but they are uncomfortably snug and definitely don’t officially fit again just yet, despite my husband’s insistence that they fit perfectly, ha ha.  Nope, not into the skin-tight pants look!

At first I was very disappointed at weigh-in Saturday morning.  I only dropped eight-tenths of a pound.  All that hard work for that?  Are you freakin’ serious?

Then I remembered that I lost over 4 pounds last week.  It seems to be the pattern, a big loss followed by a very small one, like my body’s attempt to even things out.  And when I griped about it, my husband was quick to point out, “It was a loss!”  He added, “You have lost a lot of weight.  It’s going to get slower now.”

I decided not to wait until I have hit goal weight to start cleaning out and organizing.  I will hold off on the closet, but I decided to choose one small area at a time and organize the hell out of it.  I started this weekend with my husband’s and my bathroom.  I emptied everything: we’re talking drawers, under the sink, medicine cabinet.  I cleaned every surface with disinfecting wipes, then went one by one, putting things back or tossing them.

Now we have a sparkling, orderly, very organized bathroom.   I will hit the laundry room and storage shelves next.  By the time I reach goal weight and start my dresser and closet, I will be an old pro!

Back to Logging

I’ve been experimenting, switching things up, trying new things, in an effort to find what works best for me.  For a while, I ditched my food diary, and while it has been nice not dealing with the hassle of logging everything, searching foods in the database, figuring out how to enter certain meals, etc., I have to admit, I just might really need the accountability of actually writing down (or, more like it, typing in) everything I eat and drink.  So today I am back to logging my food on MyFitnessPal.

Last night, instead of a formal workout, I changed clothes and got busy, catching up on cleaning I felt too lazy to do this past weekend.  Sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, cleaning hardwood floors, you name it, it got whipped into shape with a vengeance.

I remember one of my stepdaughters telling me, “Wow, you must really like to clean.”  I laughed, because really, I don’t.  But I do like having a clean, tidy house, so cleaning is obviously a necessary evil.

My husband and I had to get up extra early this morning, so I am sleepy and not terribly motivated to get much done today.  I will hunt down a low-key workout for the evening…then go to bed early!

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