Seven More Cubbies Tidied

I needed a place for my daughter's glue gun, my LOL stuff, my word study books, put the trash bags in a cubby near the recycle box, got the Vitamix off the counter into a cubby and labeled a few others. I'm using the cubby spaces for NEEDS because these cubbies are so easy to access. As I find I need a place for something, I clean out the cubby, label it and insert organized items. I just added 7 more! That's a total of 15 done out of 75!

New Window

The front window was single pane and sucked all the heat out in early spring. I assume it was difficult to heat that room in the winter, with the heating registers right under the window!

Today, there's a new, beautiful vinyl window!

In order to get ready for the replacement, my husband had to clear out the rest of his boxes of books. Look at the floor! I'm totally inspired to do what it takes to get this room EMPTY so the kids can play!

Sarah's stuff needs to be purged again...she has about five large trash bags full of boxes and things for playing plushies. We need to go through all her stuff and get rid of a lot of that, since she doesn't use it all. In my dreams, I see all that stuff on the bottom Expedit shelf, but I don't know it that's going to work...

Tidy House THE FINAL PHASE

Freedom is...knowing what I have and where it is AND completing long term dangling projects. I've labeled this post "2013 dangling final tidy". Yes, we actually have ARRIVED at the LAST phase of complete tidiness! I'm expecting it to take a couple months to finish up everything and come into freedom. It brings tears to my eyes and joy to my grateful heart! From messy to marvelous!

Part of "freedom" is to "know what I have and where it is" so I'm going through each room and getting to know what I have and where it is. In this process of going through each room (a FINAL time), I'll be doing some rearranging, purging and possibly purchasing. (Why not make it easy and call it Positioning, Purging, Purchasing?!)

POSITIONING: I want to have the things I use accessible and everything else into a storage mode. It doesn't have to be tucked away in the attic, but labeled and contained. When we moved, some things got stuffed onto shelves and never properly situated, now is the time to do organize (especially the pantry).

PURGING: Now that we've moved, I want to get really sleek, getting rid of stuff we just don't need to hang onto. Our lives are 1000% improved since we offloaded a ton of stuff during the move (thank you Christi!!!!) and there's still more that can go.

PURCHASING: There are a few items I feel that would help us stay organized or help us in one way or another. I've been keeping a list of things, so now as I go through our final phase, this may be the time to purchase these items. I could us a reading lamp in the tv room and a shelf for inside the frig, for example.

Today I had the idea to put a label under each cubby and use this method to tidy up the shelves. I can easily do a cubby label anytime, so I grabbed my daughter and taught her how to use the label maker with me. We made eight labels and stuck them on the shelves that were easiest to organize and purge. Then we took a few minutes and tidied each cubby! Nothing else goes in these cubbies which are now labeled (besides the contents that belong there). There's a shelf in the dining room and two in the playroom. Now I have eight cubbies (out of 75-that's over 10%!) that are DONE and labeled. I have another 10 or so that are ready for labels, but I can do that another time. It will be fun to see all the cubbies colored in soon!

Taxes One More to Go

I'm kickin' up my heels! We have two of the three years D O N E! I can breathe, it feels SO WONDERFUL! The last one I'm working on tomorrow, we'll get them in the tax program tomorrow night and we'll get them in the mail Saturday, right on time for the deadline! WAHHHOO!

Finishing the Taxes

Freedom is...completing long term dangling projects. This week, I am working to complete a HUGE dangling project, THE TAXES. We have been dragging our feet for YEARS to get caught up and this is the time.

Yesterday, I got the box out (for one of the years to be completed) and sorted through it. I'm not sure why, but my heart was racing as I went through the box. All these receipts are a reminder of times I'd rather forget, but I am going to press on. Thank you Lord for this sense of urgency and desire to jump in. I keep thinking of how awesome it will feel when it is done. Deadline to be in the mail: July 13th (Saturday).

(photo taken in Langley on Whidbey Island)