December 20, 2016

December Goal Progress: Week 2

This has been a busy week! My mom flies in tonight for an eight day visit, so I’ve been trying to get as much work as possible done now so I don’t have to work when she’s here. I think I’m in pretty good shape, though – will likely only have a few hours of work tomorrow, and then maybe an hour or so each day between now and the new year to check email and fire off a few quick responses. I’m really excited about the break!

But how about my goal to clean out / organize my house? I’m chugging away and am happy with the progress I’ve made so far, even though I’m also looking forward to being done with work so I can take care of some more involved tasks! For example, the bookshelf in my home office is a disaster zone, but I need to get some sort of organizing bins/etc to hold all the random office supplies I keep on it.

disaster_zone_home_office
Note that by office supplies, I really mean markers, glue sticks, and that big stack of construction paper on the left side of the shelf. Or if I get around to organizing my junk room upstairs I could turn that into a sewing/craft room?? Motivation!

Things I got done in the last week:

Bought a new brush attachment for my vacuum and vacuumed all my blinds. This is something I really should be doing seasonally, but it’s the first time I’ve tackled it since moving in. Better late than never?

Organized a massive shelf full of magazines, some literally going back to 2012. It is highly embarrassing that I brought them from New York, but now that I brought them across the country, I want to read them. (Ah, sunk costs – and how I irrationally won’t forget them.) I’ve tossed the time-sensitive news-y magazines and sorted the others nicely so I can read them now.

magazine_garbage
I’ve intentionally left the pile of magazines/papers on the floor of my office, because it makes me happy to see the tangible progress and know that I’ll soon have this all bagged up and in the garbage can for good.

Health/fitness and cooking magazines don’t really get outdated! I’ve been slowly working my way through the cooking magazines to pin the recipes I like so that it’s easy to find them and, you know, actually cook them. And on a related note, I’ve been making steady daily progress to tag all my Pinterest recipes for easy searching.

Took everything out of my kitchen island, figured out what kitchen gadgets are duplicates or things I otherwise don’t use, and sold the rest on my neighborhood Facebook page. I had eight kinds of mixing devices: a large food processor, a small food processor, three blenders, an immersion blender, electric beaters, and a food chopper! Insane. After ditching the excess, I reorganized my island as well as a corner cabinet that had similarly become kind of a catch-all for kitchen things. And, I cleared up enough space to move my jars of utensils (spoons, ladles, whisks, etc) into the cabinets rather than leaving them out on the counter. By the end of the month, I’d like to have my kitchen counters totally clear except for my spices, my coffeemaker, and my toaster oven.

Worked on cleaning out my various email inboxes quite a bit. I’m down to 42 emails in my personal account since January 1 (which means how many emails I have to action / didn’t respond to). I’m hoping to clear that out quite a bit more in my quest for inbox zero, so if you’ve emailed me without a response… stay tuned and don’t judge me that it’s coming so late 🙂

Finally, listed a few things for sale various places (eBay, my neighborhood Facebook group) and packed up/mailed some things I’ve been meaning to return/exchange. I’ve made about $300 from selling things I no longer use, which is a nice bonus when I’m in the throes of Christmas shopping.

Big goals for next week, especially with the holiday break: figure out an entryway solution for my living room (right now there isn’t really anywhere for guests to take off shoes/coats), find a new nightstand for my bedroom / adjust the lighting so it’s better for reading in bed, and clean out the basement storage closet, which is currently a catch all mix of camping gear, seasonal decorations, wrapping paper/gifts, and tools/hardware. That’s a lot to do in a week, but it will make a big difference if I can get it all done!

I really like having a mindset that this month is all about organizing/eliminating, because it makes me stop procrastinating and tackle things right away! This morning I opened up my closet door to grab a jacket on my way to the gym, and I ended up taking five minutes to reorganize things a little bit and make it easier to find the winter accessories I was looking for. That’s the kind of mindset I really should be in all the time, but I think too often I just push the (metaphorical) mess to the back of the closet and deal with it later 🙁 So perhaps this challenge is good from a mental/habit-building perspective as well? It’s certainly teaching me to make little steps every day toward a bigger goal!

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