One thing that’s always been a bit difficult for me is staying disciplined.  For some reason, I manage to re-think the way my life and stuff is organized about every 6 months.  I think it’s because I can’t handle clutter and excess.  And I have trouble sticking with patterns, so I need new ones every once in a while.

About 6 months ago, I started a weekly chore pattern, and succeeded about 80% of the time.  Some chores, and I’m gonna be VERY honest here, I just don’t care about.  To me, if you can’t see the dirt, it’s not there.  Hence why I sometimes skipped vacuuming our rugs or mopping the kitchen floor.  (Cleaning floors is probably my LEAST favorite chore!)  I also began to realize there are some chores I DO care about a lot – reducing clutter, having clean counters and tables, a well made bed, and clean bathrooms. After realizing this, I reevaluated my weekly chore list, flipped some things to different days since my summer schedule is very different from my academic year schedule, and have a new and improved weekly chore plan.  WOOT!  Aim for success by planning for it, that’s my thinking at least  Or, you could say I’m lowering my expectations and making it easier to succeed.  Either way, I’ll feel better about it, and that’s really all that matters, right?  Ha.  Sure.

The other thing I’ve revisited recently are daily disciplines that have become FAR LESS than daily.  As a Christian, I desire to grow in faith and my walk with the Lord daily, and frankly, I’ve become rather lazy at it.  My time spent reading scripture was decreasing more and more, and prayer was almost non-existent, except within the context of my job.  Working in full-time ministry is a blessing, but also a challenge.  When your job is so closely tied to your faith, it’s very easy for your faith walk to feel and become like a job, something you just do, not something that is woven into who you are, which is the way it’s supposed to be.

After realizing this, for probably the bazillionth time in my life, I recommitted myself to daily discipline and time with the Lord.  And I made a plan, which is really the key.  Without a plan set out, it’s easy for me to just skip out on it.  For now, I’ve decided to read one Psalm each day, and I’m doing a short daily scripture reflection from a book I own.  I’ve also added in some journaling and prayer time as well.  It has become a breath of fresh air, a blessing during my day.

I encourage you – take the time to evaluate your habits.  If the way your life is organized and the disciplines you’ve committed to aren’t working for you or aren’t satisfying, ask the tough questions – why?  Why isn’t it working?  For me, I was trying to fit into someone else’s patterns when it came to my housekeeping and chores, and I just needed to do a bit of tweaking.

Be blessed today!

Today, I’m going to share about where I spend probably 65% of my day: my desk.

You’re excited, right?

In general, I love working from home.  There’s some obvious bonuses: I can stay in my PJs until noon, there’s always snacks available, and I don’t have to deal with office gossip or endless chatter and distractions.  But there’s some downsides to it too.  For instance, I often feel torn between getting work done, and cleaning the house.  That’s a big one for me.  I’ve found that I just CAN’T work if my house is messy.  It drives me batty.

I’ve also discovered that in order to be productive and continue to work at home, it’s important for me to have a dedicated space.  I share an office with my husband, who really only uses it for a few hours on Saturdays, so basically, it’s all mine.

Even more important than having my own space, though, is having an ORGANIZED space.  I love organizing.  Unfortunately, I’m not very good at it, and I’m always trying new systems or ways of keeping my space, and my life, organized.  Nothing is perfect, and neither am I, so I just go with what works…until I find something better!

Here’s the current state of my desk:

Wow, all of those cords going every which way below my desk?  UGLY.  Same with the stackable in boxes on the top right.  Yikes.

Let’s go in for a close-up, shall we?

That’s better. At least I can pretend all the unsightly cords don’t exist, right?

1.  My new Kassett boxes from Ikea!  They’re slightly too deep for the cubbies, but I figured I could do one on the bottom and offset it with one up top.  Right now, the one on the bottom left has stationary and envelopes in it (I write a lot of thank you notes for my job) and the top right one is still empty.

2.  My handy dandy 500 GB  external hard drive.  I got it on Black Friday a couple of years ago for $50 or something ridiculous like that.  I partitioned it so that half of it is for storage (mostly photos) and half is for backing up my laptop hard drive.

3.  A picture of my younger sister and I at Versailles from my trip to Paris in college.  It’s one of my favorite photos of her and I because that trip was such an adventure for me, and I loved that I got to share the last week with my sister and my parents.

4.  A random assortment of things: a small journal I was given by my supervisor, a blue glass bird that belonged to my husbands mother, an origami flower I made, and hiding in the back is a little tin that used to be a candle that was my grandmothers from one of her trips to Asia.

5.  A picture of my cutie-patootie niece in an old green frame a friend gave to me.

6.  A large red wooden pencil that says ” Mrs. W_______” that belonged to my mother-in-law, who was a school teacher.  My husband gave it to me, and I thought it was just right for my desk

7.  A beautiful glass frame with pressed flowers in it, holding a picture of my older brother and my niece.  It’s a picture I took at my grandmother’s funeral.  This picture means SO much to me.

8.  A small frame with my sister’s senior picture (I need to get a new one of her and her husband), my favorite box of stationary from my dear friend Linnea that she gave me in college, and an Eiffel tower ornament my mother gave me after our trip to Paris.

9.  An electric pencil sharpener that I should probably move since I never use it…and a stack of books I’m either currently reading or using for work, including: In Defense of Food, In the Name of Jesus, Peppermint-Filled Pinatas, a Bible commentary for Genesis, and one of my favorite prayer books my friend Cindy introduced me too, Face to Face.

10.  My stack of plastic “in boxes”.  Each of them has a different label that I use for sorting items or my “next actions”, for all you GTD folks.  In theory, I should have probably about a dozen more, but I’m not sure I could actually handle that.  Currently, I have four.  They include House (which is currently overflowing), IVCF (job stuff), Computer (anything I need to type up or complete online that comes to me in paper form), and Inbox (which is for general tasks)

11.  A hilarious mug that says “Lefties are better lovers!” from my husband, who happens to be left-handed.

12.  Some random notes to myself or from my husband.

13.  A pretty empty picture frame.  I need to find a picture for it, because it’s been sitting empty for quite a while.

14.  Scrap paper and a random CD that needs a home.

15.  My new Target lamp!  I mixed and matched the base and shade so that it would fit on my desk.  I need to find a different bulb, though, because it peaks out above the shade.

16.  My old Manhatten desk from Target – they don’t make this style anymore.  But this one is fairly close.  It has three drawers, and the middle one is a keyboard drawer where the front folds down.  The hutch matches, and is also no longer available, but Target has a few nice options that are similar.  I really wish I had a desk that was a bit more right-hand friendly, and had a wider keyboard tray so that I could also put my mouse on it – something like this.

17.  A small black plastic container to hold pencils.  I’d love to find a cute mason jar at Goodwill to replace this.

18.  The main event, my 15 inch MacBook Pro (here’s a newer one, even though the permanent battery is just about the worst idea EVER), on top of two large dictionaries.  Why?  Because buying a monitor is not in the budget, and I needed to raise the screen so that my posture wasn’t awful.  It looks ridiculous, I’ll admit to that, but it’s functional and free.  Hiding behind my laptop is a large bottle of hand lotion that I snagged at Whole Foods the last time I was in Minneapolis.  I’ve got really dry skin in the winter, so this was essential to have close at hand.

Below my desk is a small file box, and next to my desk is a wire basket for trash.  My chair is just a basic office rolling chair, hopefully someday replaced by something a bit more elegant and comfortable.

And that’s everything!

Thanks for taking a tour of my desk.  I hope you enjoyed it!  Probably my favorite thing right now is all of the green – I love green!  It’s so fun and punchy, and very appropriate for spring.  Next on my list would probably be the pictures of family.  Since they’re all 4+ hours away, I like to have little reminders of them close by.  I definitely need to get a picture of my parents and my nephew though!

What’s your favorite thing about your desk?  Either at home or at the office?  Do you keep pictures of family and friends? Are you super organized, or is yours covered with paper and really an “organized mess”?  Do tell!

I’ve always struggled with planning ahead, so the last few weeks I’ve been making an extra effort to plan meals ahead of time and use a list for my grocery shopping.  I decided to create a document that would help me both plan AND shop, plus it’s pretty and cute when I hang it on the side of my fridge to remind me what’s for dinner each night.  Gotta love something that makes me smile when I look at it every night while cooking dinner!

At the top, it includes the dates for the week.   Below that is a section for breakfast, lunch and dinner for each day, and then below that is a section to jot down items needed (in this case, ones I need to purchase) for meals for each day.  At the very bottom is a section for extra items I might need on a daily basis, like bread or milk.

And guess what, I’m going to share this with you!  Let me know if it’s helpful.  I’ve printed a few copies and LOVE using it to help keep myself organized.

Here it is, just click on the link and the PDF will download.  Grocerymenulist

She arrived yesterday in the midst of a crazy snow storm.  After ripping open the packaging, I set eyes on my beloved new bag…

She’s beautiful!  This picture does not do it justice (mostly because it’s taken with my pitiful P&S Canon that has a broken flash while my real camera is off to get fixed).  The green and blue colors are nice and bright, but not too punchy for my taste.  I decided to risk it and go with the white center panel, hoping and praying that it doesn’t get too dirty.  The pink logo was just a fun little extra I decided on – I thought it made the bag a bit more girlie, but not too much.  (For those who want details – this is the custom laptop messenger bag in size medium. It fits my 15 inch MacBook Pro perfectly.  The colors are peacock blue, white, and light green, and the logo is berry.  The interior liner is light blue.)

Let me tell ya, though – this bag is AWESOME.  It has soooooooooooooooooooooooo much room in it.  Way more than I expected.  I can fit my laptop in it, plus probably the equivalent of 6 or 7 books, PLUS all my cords and stuff for my laptop, plus my phone, pens, wallet, and other random things I carry with me every day.  There are all sorts of zipper and velcro pockets, inside and out, that make it super easy to organize everything.  Now I just have to remember what goes where!

There’s even a built in protective sleeve for my laptop!  My picture of it is all fuzzy and awful, so I’ll have to try again later when my office is brighter.  But I love that I can carry my computer with me and it’s super easy to get it in and out of the bag.  My previous bag made this absolutely ANNOYING due to the way it was designed.

So far, I’m loving it! Thanks to my father-in-law who gave me a gift card towards my new bag

I’ll try to get more pictures and a fuller review up sometime soon.  Have a happy Tuesday!

It’s time for another edition of Weekend Planning!  I neglected to share my plans last week, and frankly, I can’t remember if I actually got anything done.  Whoops.  Hopefully this time around, sharing it with you will help keep me accountable!
House:

- Put the hide-a-bed away in the basement (something that should have been done 2 weeks ago!)

- Find a selection of (cheap) hardware for our downstairs bathroom – we need knobs, toiled paper holder, and towel bar.

- Continue researching paint options for our dining room and living room

- Research how to make small repairs on plaster walls (anyone have experience?)

- Make hummus for lunches next week

- Sweep and mop the kitchen floor (it’s been neglected in my daily chores)

Personal:

- remove batteries and memory card from my camera and package it to send on Monday to Chicago for repair

- Give myself an at-home facial

- Relax with DH before a crazy week begins!

How about you? What are your weekend plans?

A few weeks back, I posted about how I try to keep our house tidy by making sure everything has a home.  And then last week, my friend Jill shared about how she keeps her life in order with a home management binder.  An idea I still have’t put into practice, all in good time though, right?

Well, I was thinking about the bigger tasks that are easy to forget – ya know, like getting your oil changed regularly? Or changing your furnace filter?

So I made a list of “the biggies” – things around the house that need to be done annually, and then divided them up by month.  Feel free to make your own list, and then plug them into your calendar so you don’t forget!

You know you want to be like Martha and get your cleaning groove on.

January: Clean medicine cabinets; toss expired meds.

February: Clean all the hard-to-reach places: behind the stove, refrigerator, washer/ dryer, sofas and under beds.

March: Steam-clean carpets.

April: Organize the pantry and kitchen cabinets.

May: Wash windows and screens.

June: Wash duvets, blankets, comforters, spreads, pillows.

July: Clean and organize the garage.  Ditto with the basement.  Toss or donate items you don’t use anymore.

August: Clean out drawers and closets. Donate usable clothing and items to charity.

September: Defrost and clean freezer, refrigerator, stove, oven.

October: Clean your gutters after the leaves fall.

November: Polish silver, wash china, dust inside the china cabinet. (Just in time for the holidays!)

December: Turn mattresses; vacuum upholstered furniture and drapes.

Todays post is brought to you by my friend Jill.  We haven’t actually “met” yet, but her and I have become close due to our involvement in an online ministry called Christian Family Planning, a place that encourages and educates women about natural forms of birth control, pregnancy, and raising a family – all from a Christian perspective.  Perhaps I’ll post about it more in the future.

But for today, Jill is going to share a little bit about how she keeps organized with her home management binder.  I’m hoping to start something similar soon!

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One of my goals before we have kids is to get our life as organized as possible so that fitting a child in doesn’t completely throw us for a loop. Don’t get me wrong, I KNOW it will be a huge change, but the more organized I can be beforehand, the better!

This weekend I made a Home Management Binder. I’ve read about them online before, and finally decided to try and make one for myself! So, below is my adventure in my new HMB.

First, I needed the obvious: a binder. I found this great binder made out of recycled materials at Target for about $7.00.

Next, I had to figure out what all I wanted in my HMB. I got a lot of great suggestions (thank you!) and ended up deciding on a weekly calendar, meal planner, shopping list, daily chore list, weekly chore list, vacation planner, gift planner, emergency, and “other.”

First, our weekly calendar. I made the calendars with a section for me, a section for Jason, and a section for what our meal will be each day. I bought different colored pens so that I could easily distinguish between the sections. I made the calendar in MS Word, and then just changed the dates to make one for each week of the year. Pretty easy!

Next, the shopping list. I made the shopping lists in MS Word as well. There are three lists to a page, with perforations (done at Kinko’s), so that I can tear off one list and take it to the store. I put the categories in the order that I typically walk through the store.

I made two chore lists, and put each in a page protector so that I could check things off with a dry erase marker, and then just reuse them the next day/week. I also left areas to add notes or other chores in if something else comes up.

Next I made a vacation preparation list–also in a page protector so that it’s write-on-able and reuseable! I made a generic packing list, and also a place to put in notes about where we’re going/what we’re doing so that we don’t forget anything. On the back is a section of things to do before leaving the house–like holding the mail, giving a spare key to a neighbor, etc…I’m always thinking of gifts for people, and then forgetting them when it really matters. So, I made some generic excel spreadsheets to keep a record of gift ideas for people.

Lastly, I made a section for Emergency, and Other. To respect everyone’s phone number on my Emergency list, I’m not going to post a picture of it. But, it has emergency numbers, including doctors and the vet, as well as things to remember in an emergency (insurance #’s, etc…)

The “other” section has blank lined paper, graph paper, and a cute recycled-paper folder for any documents that I want to keep in there.

After everything was put together, I added a few final touches like a small pencil bag for the colored pens/dry erase markers to keep in there, a plastic velcro-folder for receipts and coupons, and some cute colorful tabs to divide the sections.

I decided against putting any financial information in there, because we already have a filing box for statements and important documents like that. I figured putting it in the binder would be overkill.

So, that’s my HMB! I’m hoping it functions really well for me–I imagine it will be a work in progress as I continue to think of things that would work better, or things to add or take away. The total cost was about $35.00, plus the time to make the documents. Not too bad! If you want to make your own, and want to use my templates as a jumping off point, I’d be happy to email them to you.

Yay organization!

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Yay, indeed!  Good job, Jill.  You’ve inspired me

Well, this is my second weekend of trying to plan, and I didn’t do the greatest, which is a bummer. I had a busy weekend with a retreat all day Friday and Saturday, and then spent some time with friends on Sunday night watching the VIkings (such a frustrating game!)  There’s still a lot on my list to get done, and I guess it will have to happen today!

Here’s how I did:

House:

- Pick up some paint chips to consider for various rooms in the house

- Unpack all of my paintings and consider where I might hang them

- Strip the beds (we had guests on Thursday night)

Personal:

-  Weekend retreat with students from Friday to Saturday, so I’ll be pretty busy

- Spend some quality time with DH on Sunday before the semester starts on Monday

- Contact a photo repair place in Chicago about sending in my camera to get fixed.

The beds can wait until laundry day, but I need to call the photo place soon!  I also didn’t get time to menu plan on Friday like I normally would, so that’s going on the list for today.  Busy buys!

How was your weekend?

I’m participating in My Happy House’s Weekend Planning again.  Last weekend was a huge success, and even though I have a lot going on this weekend (students are arriving!  Yikes!), I still have a few things I need to “get done”.

House:

- Pick up some paint chips to consider for various rooms in the house

- Unpack all of my paintings and consider where I might hang them

- Strip the beds (we had guests on Thursday night)

Personal:

-  Weekend retreat with students from Friday to Saturday, so I’ll be pretty busy

- Spend some quality time with DH on Sunday before the semester starts on Monday

- Contact a photo repair place in Chicago about sending in my camera to get fixed.

Not a whole lot on the list, but that’s because I’ll be busy Friday and Saturday working, so Sunday is like a day off for me.  I may try to do a few other things, but things will be pretty packed in already, so we’ll see how it goes!

What are your weekend plans?

I was going to post another “Keeping the House Clean” tip, but I think I’m going to wait until next week.  Yesterdays tip may have been enough of a challenge for one week

Instead, I’ll share something somewhat related – my new weekly housekeeping schedule!  For some, this may be a “duh? doesn’t everyone have that?” kind of thing, but for me, it wasn’t intuitive.  I didn’t grow up having daily or weekly chores, at least I can’t remember having that (correct me if I’m wrong, mom!).  But before I got married, I shared a house with 3 other girls.  We split up chores on a weekly basis and divided them up by rooms – kitchen, living room, bathroom, and trash/yardwork.  That worked pretty well for us, but honestly, it was difficult to negotiate chores between 4 girls with three different standards of cleanliness :-/

When I got married, I knew that most of the daily and weekly chores would be my responsibility.  My husband does help with some things (he’s pretty adamant about lawn mowing and snow plowing, which I am MORE than grateful for), and we’re generally not very messy people, but that doesn’t mean our house doesn’t get dirty.

For the last year and half, I’ve done various housekeeping on an as-needed basis.  Bathroom look dirty? Okay, clean it today.  Floors looking grimy? Pull out the broom and mop.  I’ve been blessed to have enough flexibility to do that.

But lately, it hasn’t been happening that way, and instead, I’ve delayed things.  And then things get really dirty.  Not a pretty sight to see.  Last week, I stumbled upon a blog with the suggestion of having a weekly housekeeping schedule.  BINGO!  That’s what I need.  If I have assigned “chores” each day, that means I won’t forget or delay.  Plus, I can customize it to our schedule!  Sweeeet.

Taking inspiration from this blog, I took this example of a weekly schedule …

And adapted it!  I’m not a stay at home mom, but I do work from home, so this felt the most similar.  Here’s my adaptation based on our schedule (sorry it’s not as pretty!)

Monday – Grocery Shop, Errands, Clean one room thoroughly

Tuesday – Laundry (sheets/towels)              Evening: Work meetings

Wednesday – Dust mop floors, vacuum rugs, clean bathrooms

Thursday – Laundry (clothes)

Friday – Menu Plan, Plan Week                    Once a month work meetings during the day

Saturday - Yard work, House Projects, Activities

Sunday - Church, Family Time                     Evening: Work meetings

You’ll noticed I moved some things around.  I tend to have the most energy and desire to clean at the beginning of the week.  Something about starting off on the right foot, or something like that.  Since I work from home and I’m easily distracted by clutter and mess, spending a little time early in the week tidying up and cleaning is a good use of my time.  Also, since I have fairly packed evenings on Tuesdays, I chose to do laundry that day because I actually like doing laundry.  I know, crazy, right?  So at least I’m doing something pleasant during the day that I enjoy, instead of something that drains me.  I also freed up our Sundays from chores since that day is a nice time to relax after a crazy week.

We’ll see how this works – I’m slowly readjusting into this schedule.  There may still be some tweaking that needs to be done.  But I hope it works!

If you want to do something similar, start with a list of the weekly chores you need to accomplish and a separate piece of paper or spreadsheet with the days of the week.  Include any weekly activities or obligations that might influence your ability to accomplish these chores (meetings, activities, etc).  Then just plug in the chores according to your preference!  There you have it, your own personal weekly housekeeping schedule.  I realize some of us have pretty complicated schedules, but do what works best for you.

Do you have a weekly plan? Or some other way of managing all the endless chores around the house?  I know my sister is a nurse and her schedule changes every single week, so I think implementing a weekly schedule wouldn’t really work for her – I have no clue how she does it.  I’m in awe, to be honest.  But maybe she’ll reply with a suggestion or tip…hint hint!