I am social and so is my clutter

I have come to a realization that there are some strong similarities between me and my clutter. Let me explain...

1. I am social and so is my clutter

I am definitely a social person. I love being around people and I am very much of the more the merrier mentality. Yes, I do like to spend time one-on-one with people too but a large social gathering energizes and excites me. Like an introvert needs their quiet time, I need my social, out among people time. How does this relate to my clutter?

January 14th is National Organize Your Home Day! Part 2

Ok, so as promised here I did P.A.R.T.Y (Put Away Random Things, Yeah!) today in honor of NOYH (National Organize Your Home) Day.

The three areas I decided to tackle were the storage shelves in my kitchen, the top of the refrigerator and the top of the washer and dryer.

Here are the before and after pictures to show what kind of difference a little bit of time and energy made in making those spots more organized.

Take a look....

The Storage Shelves in the Kitchen

January 14th is National Organize Your Home Day!

I have to admit that I did not know that January 14th was "National Organize Your Home Day" but supposedly it is. Most of these random holidays I do tend to let pass without much thought, but since I am on this "clean slate" "new organized year" and so forth path I guess I have to come up with something to organize today.....

Despite all my efforts, there will always be something that can be organized better or organized again or just plain can be organized period, so this should not be too hard. 

There is always one spot!!

There is always one spot in my house that never, ever, ever seems to be able to remain organized and non-messy. Just to set the record straight, I am in no way going to try to convince you that there is only one spot in my house that is messy. Yeah right, dream on! There are many spots. As a matter of fact, most days there are many more messy spots than clean spots at my house. 

What baffles me is the fact that there is this one particular spot that, no matter what I try to do to it, attracts clutter and chaos and mess and disarray. It is not a huge spot, but it is centrally located and it is a catch-all and I have talked about it once before here. 

Food Challenge Recap

Like I already mentioned, the first part of my food challenge came to an end a week ago. Now that I have recovered from a couple of days of intensive cooking and prepping for the rest of the month and a weekend filled with organization projects and a birthday party I am ready to recap how it went. I am going to show you what my fridge looked like after the fact. (I forgot to take a picture of the freezer and now it is packed with meals and groceries so I will not worry about that).

I am still trying to figure out this picture taking and editing thing, so please be patient with me on that. Take a look at the after pictures, this is what was left in my fridge and pantry once I had cooked my way through it :) If you want to compare you can look at the before pictures.

Jan 2nd - Baking away

I continued my food challenge today and made another small dent in the pantry and fridge. 

Here are the items I made and what ingredients I used today:

Breakfast: 

- Oatmeal

     *oats

     *milk

     *butter

Lunch:

- "Pizza"

     *homemade dough using 1 pack of yeast, sea salt, all purpose flour and oil from the pantry

     *the sauce was half the jar of potato/cauliflower soup

     *the meatballs cut up were the topping

     *half of the piece of Parmesan cheese shredded on top

January 2015 - Starting with a clean slate

A new year has begun and this year, rather than starting with a long list of resolutions, I want to start with a clean slate and see where it takes me.

Today it took me into my fridge, freezer and pantry. 

I needed to take a closer look at what I have on hand in the food department as this new year starts, and I also want to truly challenge myself to stretch what I have to the fullest. Looking at the list it might seem like I have a lot of food, and there is, but some quantities are very small. 

The challenge now is to try to use up a lot of this food over the next couple of days and then I will post an updated list and some new pictures. Take a look below for today's details!

Progress Report

I am finally sitting down to write another blog post, despite my month-long dry spell, I am determined to get back to it. Since almost a quarter of the year has passed I decided that a recap of my progress in relation to my New Years Challenges would be suitable. I am simply walking through the challenges and how I am doing with each one:

Challenge 1 - Organization, organization, organization!

I am extremely proud to say that I FINALLY feel like I have made real progress when it comes to organization. This is mostly due to the fact that I spent the better part of spring break on a solo organization mission while my husband and two oldest kids were away at my in-laws. I will touch more on the specifics of this later, but all that is important to note is that my house is mostly organized and it is "20 minutes from company-ready" which I will also explain later. It is a huge relief and though there are some smaller projects here and there to tackle still, the HUGE ones are done!! So stop on by :) (As long as you give me 20 minutes heads up....)

Breaking up with clutter is hard to do...

Earlier today I was reading a new post on my friend Elizabeth's blog A New Version of Me (which by the way is an amazingly heartfelt blog worth reading) and she was talking about a clutter challenge she is doing. A clutter challenge! How perfect would that would be for me!! I have already admitted that clutter is a problem area of mine in my New Year's Challenge #1, so what better way to stay a bit accountable than to join in on this challenge?!

The original challenge is from a lady named SRB and she writes all about it on her blog VeggieSausages. 

The first step in the challenge is to Fess Up about our clutter....so here goes....