2018 Project, Challenge #1 Progress Report 2

Here I am, checking in to post progress once again on my first challenge.  As a reminder, here are the things I set out to do.
Daily Household Routines

1. Get up with the alarm.
2. Make the bed every morning.
3. Establish breakfast menus.
4. Bathe or shower at night.
5. Plan my clothes for the next day.
6. Go to bed by 9:00 pm, 9:30 at the latest.

I haven't successfully accomplished all of the daily household routines each day.  Getting up with the alarm is becoming a little easier and more frequent since a new family member joined our household, our 9 week old puppy Dakoda (spelled with a d 'cause J insisted on it).  Usually she is ready to go outside by 4 am if she hasn't already woken us up earlier.  Other than getting up with the alarm, I am really struggling with establishing this routine and as long as I am the one putting R on the bus in the mornings, it seems that I will always run short on time in one way or another.  Hopefully, that will be less of a factor once she obtains her driver's license in the fall, but for now we still have to find a way to make all of this work.  I am also realizing that I just feel a lot of overwhelm and that maybe I need to tackle a different version of this project right now.  I am going to continue to work towards all of the items in the daily routines list, but my greater focus is going to be on organization and decluttering.

Organization & Decluttering

1. Finish putting away the Christmas decorations.
2. Sort and organize photos into albums and put into wooden toy chest.
3. Clean out and organize cedar chest.
4. Bring a box of books from the storage shed to sort through.
5. Take items to local women's shelter thrift store to donate.  Did this but have another load ready.
6. Organize the exercise equipment.

It is clear that I have had a stronger focus on organization and decluttering.  I just finished re-reading this post written a few months after J and I got married.  Obviously we were in the afterglow of the marriage and having fun "playing house," so to speak, but we were also incredibly busy living life.  Occasionally I missed having access to ALL my stuff in storage at the time, but on the whole, I was living quite well with the things I had.  Now that we are coming up on the 2nd anniversary of buying our current home and I am still faced with unpacked boxes and areas of stuff taking over my life, I really feel like it is time to get a jump on Spring cleaning and decluttering.  Progress is being made, although many of these items weren't on my original list.  In addition to the items crossed off above, here are some of the things I've done since the start of the new year.

1. Hang wood cross in laundry room.
2. Hang wood shelf in living room on wall behind my chair.
3. Start going through fabric and yarn for donation.  I currently have four cardboard boxes of varying sizes ready to mail to the Textile Center in Minneapolis later in March for their spring sale and I'm not done, yet.  This is a big area of overwhelm for me and I think I will feel so much relief once my stash is pared down to a manageable means.
4. Partial box of knitting pattern books (and other books) collected for donation to the local used book store.
5. Another box of household décor, dishes, and knick-knacks for my mom and her friends to look through before donating what they don't want.
6. Sorted through the owner's manual files and eliminated those on stuff we don't own any more.  Set aside a stack to mail to the new owner of my old house on things like the thermostat and HVAC.

I do feel like I am learning and growing during this process.  For example, I eliminated some mugs from our kitchen cabinets and put them in the knick-knack box (item five above).  Now, you must understand, dear reader, that I really liked these mugs and had had them as part of a collection for a long time.  If you don't know, I have been collecting vintage and post-86 Homer Laughlin China Company Fiesta dishes since I was a kid.  I started out collecting the vintage pieces and then began collecting some of the post-86 to use as every day dishes, which we are still using today.  These mugs are post-86 but have the ring-type handle like the original design instead of a handle that traverses the full height of the cup.  It dawned on me one morning that whenever I reach for a mug in the cabinet, I almost never reach for one of the Fiesta mugs and after thinking about it, I realized that I while I love the design of the ring handle, I don't find it to be comfortable to grip and the heat from the liquid seems to transfer to it, making it too hot to hold until my drink has cooled a bit.  Since we don't have a lot of excess storage space in our kitchen, I decided to get rid of these mugs to free up more room for what we do use.  Once upon a time, my sentimental tendencies might have really struggled with this decision, but I seem to be at peace with it.  The biggest lesson here for me was the rise of functionality over aesthetics as the determining factor in whether I kept something or not.


I'll be back later in the week to post Challenge #2 of my 2018 Project.  Until then, have a great week!