Tidying, Instead of Decluttering…

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!  I enjoyed a very relaxing day with family, and am now attempting to get myself organized for the new year… 

A couple weeks ago now, Anne Lene over at Minimalist Sometimes finished up a 7 day decluttering and blogging challenge.  I was inspired to declutter, until I went home and looked around my messy mid-renovation chaos of a house, and then sat down on the couch completely discouraged to pout…

But, instead of a decluttering challenge, I decided to just try and reign in some of the chaos of my house… Each day I would try to do at least 20 minutes of tidying.  Some sort of tidying…

I recently finished reading the book “Unf*ck your habitat : you’re better than your mess” by Rachel Hoffman.  It wasn’t anything ground breaking or mind blowing, but it was a funny read and it was refreshing because she understands that we are human and have lives and might not actually enjoy the act of cleaning… She also has a website.  The book and the website have all sorts of challenges to help get you going on the road to a nice clean home.  Maybe some day I’ll go through her challenges, but for now… 20 minutes…

One of the mainstays of Rachel’s method is the 20/10.  20 minutes of cleaning or tidying, then 10 minutes of rest.  The idea is that 20 minutes isn’t a very long commitment, so it should be easy enough to get enough motivation to get off the couch and *do something* for 20 minutes, and then you reward yourself with a full 10 minutes of rest or fun…

I decided that for the month of December, I would try my hardest to complete 1 x 20 minute tidy each day.  In a hopes that it will at least keep some of the renovation chaos at bay, and allow me to feel somewhat relaxed in my renovation-chaos-ridden house.

Well… How have I done, you ask?  We are currently 27 days in to December, and I’ve completed my daily 20 minute tidy only 12 times… Not exactly a resounding success… Especially when a lot of those tidying times were repeating something that was “tidied” the time before…  But I still have a few days in December to improve…

Anyway, I thought I’d share some of my before and after shots of my 20 minute tidy sessions…

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My Realistic Expectations for February

February was a good month… Other than “failing” at my original focus and monthly challenge.  But, I also did a bit of soul searching and adjusting of my expectations of myself.

I used to read this blog called “A Slob Comes Clean” and one thing that she always expressed was that when things started getting crazy around the house, she would return to the basics (or survival mode, as she puts it), the one thing that was the key to keeping things from tumbling down in to the depth of clutter and mess for her was to run her dishwasher every night.  And that idea stuck with me since then.

Partway through February, when I missed a few blog posts and was feeling overwhelmed, I decided I should enact my own type of survival mode.  I decided to not attempt to create any new habits or take on any new projects, but just try my best to keep up with the ones that I was already struggling with, or even let go of some of them until I felt better in control.

So, what did my survival mode look like?  What did I do?

I got my Credit Report… You should too!

As a part of the process I laid out for myself to get organized before going through my mortgage renewal, I wanted to take a look at my credit report so that I would be able to make sure that there weren’t any errors on it.  It is something that a lot of personal finance bloggers recommend doing at least once a year, and honestly, I hadn’t looked at my credit report since I signed up for some 1 month promotion for fraud protection (you know the deals I’m talking about… one month free, and they send you this crazy in-depth report on your credit, with your credit score, but if you don’t remember to cancel the trial, it’ll cost you $X every month… )

Anyway, I managed to get out of that without paying anything, but that was years and years ago… And since then I have had different credit cards, moved a couple times… Got married… Things have changed, so it is good to take a look and make sure that there isn’t anything fishy on the report.  

Ru-Ru: Where “Auto”-Pilot Steered Me Wrong

When I started this blog, I was trying to get out of my rut of living in auto-pilot.  I wanted to be more aware of, not only my finances, but my life in general.  I wanted to live with intention.

I definitely feel like I have made strides in the right direction over the last year and a half, but when I was reading a recent post on the Frugalwoods blog about their recent car purchases, I was reminded of the time I bought my car… with a car loan… and then just left it on auto-pilot…

 

My Ru-Ru!

 

Ru-Ru is my first car.  I bought her a few months after I moved out of my parents’ place and in to my first condo, and I’ve had her ever since.  For the first couple months of living in my new condo, my work had a spare truck that they let me use while the normal driver went back to school for a few months to finish up.

So, of course, the moment the he got back from school, I was all of a sudden without the vehicle I had become accustomed to using… Which meant it was time to go buy one.

Adulting… also known as tidying up…

We came back from our vacation mid-week last week, and jumped straight back in to the regular full time work routine, which, combined with the crazy jet-lag that you get from traveling to a place half way around the world, caused things around the house to get a little messy and backed up… When you’re an adult, things don’t stop for you to recover from your vacation… So on Saturday morning, it was time for me to step up, and get on with adulting… which in this case meant getting my lazy ass off the couch and doing some household chores… (Have you read the book Adulting by Kelly Williams Brown?  Or read her blog?  She’s hilarious! If you haven’t, you should…)

Big Cat wants nothing to do with Adulting… 

Of course, I decided that my motivation for getting up would be that I could blog about it… and share how messy my house was, and how easy it was to tidy up… Which brought me to discover an unpublished post from months and months ago sitting in my drafts… it was about decluttering and tidying my kitchen from back when I was doing that 31 day clutter free challenge… that I only got to day 9 on… So, now you will have the joy of seeing a bit of that… and a bit of my Saturday…

First up, I needed to clean up my nest… also known as the couch…