11.20.19 - Overwhelm

Well, would you look at this. It's been nearly 4 years since I last posted and this blog still does exist :P Compared to any blog I look at these days, this one is pretty rough looking. But that's okay. That's not the purpose that I came back to it (honestly I had forgotten about it for a few years there). But this morning, while I was having a little breakdown, I thought, that maybe if I just get words out, it will help me feel better.
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So, I opened up my gmail and composed an email to myself. And I think it kind of helped. Or the 10 minutes of alone time to bawl my eyes out that I was able to manage while my boys played nicely was what did the trick. Either way, I wrote this jumble of words below. It's not neat or thought through or anything. It's just raw honesty of things floating out. It seems every month or so I go through this day or two where I feel like I'm in general just being sh*tty at life. I suppose we all go through this from time to time. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself at this moment.
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So, I decided I'm going to post it out in the interwebs...honestly, hoping that no one I actually know still comes back here and reads it. Maybe somehow this will give me some sort of accountability to get something figured out. Or, maybe it will be another 4 years before I come back and embarrassingly read these words (if I don't delete it 2 hours after I post it that is...) - So, without further ado, words from me, from 5 hours ago that I was typing just to get it out of me. And ended in a pretty good question to get answered. The funny thing is...my 5 year old is what stopped my typing. He came into my room with a heart he had colored to help me feel better. <3
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I hate to say it. But I think I'm overwhelmed. I've never wanted to use that word. Or more like I never thought I should be overwhelmed. Not at this point in my life. I cried and dreamed of having this job for the first year of our oldest son's life. I wanted to be a stay at home mom. Be with him and his future siblings every day. To nurture, care for, play and create with, and just be with them. But now he is 5 and younger brother is 2.5 years old. And here it is. I am overwhelmed. And I think the thing that makes it so hard for me, is that I don't think I should be overwhelmed and that may be the hardest part of it all. Putting myself down for finally coming to a point of letting myself think I am overwhelmed when I think to myself that I have no reason and shouldn't be overwhelmed. But I am. And it comes in phases. I'd say every few weeks or once a month. I feel like there is more I should be doing and other things I shouldn't be doing that I am doing to much of. 

Too much screen time for the boys, too much time for me endlessly scrolling (which more than likely leads to comparisons that I'm not doing enough of the 'right' things and too much of the 'wrong' things). 

I'm not sitting down and playing enough. I'm not working hard enough to get them to eat healthier meals instead of the five things they will eat on repeat. 

I feel like I should be doing something to help financially. 

I should be finding ways to save more money. 

I'm not setting a good enough example of how to be healthy (but currently working on this, Day 3 of a 21 day workout program!). 

I'm not teaching them how to play independently. 

I lose my self control and yell at them too much. 

They don't listen to my directions enough and seem to have meltdowns every time they are told no and that is my fault. 

I'm not getting them outside enough to run around when the conditions aren't picture perfect. 

I'm not setting up invitations to play or create. 

I'm not keeping the house clean enough, the laundry done, beds made, counters clear, messes tidied, meals made. 

I'm not doing it right. 

That's how I feel. And it hurts.

And every few weeks I come up with ideas on how to fix it. Go to bed earlier so you can get up earlier and get things done before they get up. Set up a schedule or a routine for my day and stick to it. Meal plan healthy meals and make them and figure out how to teach the boys to eat better. But I never get it to stick. Then I think, just try one thing. That's why I've started (for the 4th time) a workout program. I don't know exactly why, but I think this time it is going to stick. Partially because I have 2 different friends I am doing it with. But then I do the one thing and it's not like I have nothing else to do with my day. I end up getting sucked into the screen. Sitting down doing nothing or not getting the things done that I want. I know I need a list to keep me going but I always fall off it after a few days. I'm trying and it's hard, because every month-ish I fall apart again. Start crying that I'm not enough. Not doing what I should be for my family. Failing. Beating myself up because it shouldn't be this hard. I'm a freaking stay at home mom, I tell myself it shouldn't be this hard. Plenty of other moms keep their houses clean and food on the table while also working 40+hour weeks. Other moms are single parents and don't have a partner that helps out in the evenings and on weekends.

So why can't I figure it out? Isn't this what I wanted to do? Be home with my boys. Spend time with them? So why do I lash out at them. Why do I turn the TV on so I can have some quiet and use it as a babysitter so I can get things done (but then feel like I've accomplished nothing)? Why can't I just figure out a fucking cleaning schedule and stick to it? Why can't I get a damn routine in place? Why can't I find a motivation in anything? Shouldn't it be the boys that I stay home with?

1.11.16
Today marks the first full week as a stay at home mom. I'm nervous and excited for this new chapter all at the same time. Of course ideas and lists of things to accomplish are floating around in my head along with the questions of how to do everything and most importantly help our little bug to grow and learn.
The morning has started off as I expected. I was able to get some tidying done between nurturing Bug as he is extra sensitive right now with 4 teeth making their way out. While he has napped I'm working through ideas of a rough schedule we can try to stick to. Pretty much the same as I've sketched out before...I'm great at writing out lists and planning things out, but once I sit down, it's much more difficult to get up and begin. Hence me documenting this morning!

Week 2 -- Day 2 of Decluttering

Today, I quickly tackled two more drawers. These are drawers that both hold random utensils that rarely get used, but some do get used.  You'll see in the pictures that I utensils I kept, are still split across two drawers, but I could easily combine them later.

Random Misc Utensil drawer before

Emptying and sorting as I go, from left to right: Keep, Relocate, and Garage Sale

After and organized drawer. You'll notice that the Iowa State spatula has moved from the garage sale pile into the drawer to be kept. Jesse got home as I was sorting through and informed me that he does in fact use this when he grills. I thought he used others that we have but I guess those are too short. Good thing I checked with him!

This is the Misc and mostly knife drawer before. Eeeesh couldn't tell on my phone this was so blurry!

Same here where I've emptied the and sorted the drawer the left pile is to keep and the right pile is for the garage sale, and the little pile at the top are to be thrown away. Don't worry we aren't knife-less now, we have a block of knives that sit on the counter.

And here is the after. As you can tell both drawers aren't full so could be combined. But right now I'm afraid that if I combine them they'll just get all jumbled around and won't be easy to access the items when we need them.

Start of Week 2

Well, it's a good thing I was extra motivated last Sunday. Because not only have you not seen any updates here, but there haven't been any updates to report. That's right. I went through the whole week ignoring my most recent challenge. Part of me wonders if it was because I mentally already knew I had made my 'quota' for the week. We'll find out how this week goes I guess.

Today I decided to go through our junk drawer, which I'm sure is something that should probably be looked at once a month.

Here is the before. It doesn't look to horrible, but that's because a big notebook is covering nearly all the contents. The drawer was pretty full.

I emptied it all out on the counter.

Then made three piles. From Left to Right: Trash, relocate to another part of the house, put back in the drawer as neatly as possible.

And here is the end result. Now, no it's not too organized, but with the hodge podge of items in this drawer, I'm not sure there is a way we can make it organized. Considering we probably grab a phone charger once a day or so, no use in wrapping them up all neat and tidy, right?

Plus, here's the question of the day; should a junk drawer be expected to be nice and organized?

My Next Challenge: Decluttering

Yup. Decluttering. Honestly, it has been something that's been on my mind for quite some time. I've been reading the Becoming Minimalist blog for a few months now, and last year for my birthday I requested and received The 100 Thing Challenge. So really, minimalism and decluttering have been on my mind for over a year.

I already go through phases of purging possessions on occasion, usually in one focused area. But this time, I'm going through the whole house. I have a plan and am setting goals, plus hope to track my progress here. Of course, knowing me, this plan comes in the form a of a list. A categorized list in Excel format to be exact.

I've broken down each room (right now excluding the basement and garage) into bite-sized chunks. Maybe even toddler bite-sized chunks. When I get 3 weeks into this and the high of my new challenge and list checking wears off, I want my weekly 'tasks' to be easy to accomplish rather than daunting. So, what's the challenge you ask?

115 areas to declutter in 6 months
See --- I told you toddler bite-sized chunks.

My plan is to attack just 5 areas each week. How I got to a whole 115 is be breaking each cupboard or drawer into it's own item. So, down the road, tackling one drawer during the day won't be too big of a deal. I realize some weeks will be more productive than others, that's why I'm not planning for 7 items a week. At the end of the 6 months I'll have gone through the main living areas of our home and will have a big pile of items and we'll hold a garage sale or find places to donate.

So, now that you know my challenge and the simple plan of attack, here is what I accomplished today, a full week of items, five kitchen cupboards! This week is going to be one of those highly productive ones since I'm excited to get going!

Before:
These 2 cupboards don't seem that full, but after unloading them and weeding through the items we haven't even used the 2 years we've lived in this house, it proved there was more than I realized. Items just taking up space that we don't use.

This is nearly everything that didn't go back in the cupboards. I have some jelly jars to give back to Mom, lots of glasses for the garage sale and a group to go through with Jesse. See, this is all of our stuff I'm going through, not just mine. He needs to be all in on this too. It wouldn't be right for me to give away an item that means something to him that I didn't realize. We ended up keeping most of that group that I checked with him on.

The cupboard afterwards, only one side filled up! It felt so freeing since I know eventually I want to remove 4 of our cupboards so we can take down part of the wall and make the space feel more open. Being able to open up more cupboard space feels great!

I went through 3 more cupboards. Not a whole lot in those changed since I'd recently gone through them, or they are small enough where only items we use fill them up. Here are the after pictures:

The other benefit of going through these kitchen cupboards, I'm cleaning out the shelving too, which I've been putting off. I'm excited for the week and to see how much more I can get through!

Do you go through phases of purging your possessions? I'm hoping this process will open my eyes to some things that I buy and then don't use so that I can stop myself buying it before it gets stashed somewhere and then given away later.

Christmas Lyric Canvas

Carrying on with Christmas decorations from my Christmas Craft list. Today we venture to the two canvases with Christmas hymn lyrics.  Now, I made these in two different ways and got pretty much the same results.

The Simple Supplies:

Lyrics printed out -- I got these prints from Landee See, Landee Do

Knife & Cutting Board

Pencil

Canvas (or two)

Paint colors of choice -- I used a shimmer white as a base coat with Christmas Green and Red for the 'filler' space

The Simplified Steps:

Step One - Paint the shimmer base coat on both canvases

Step Two- Cut your printed lyrics down to the size of the canvas, so it fits in the back of your canvas

Step Three - Hold your canvas (with the paper tucked in the back of it) up to a window or light so you can see through and have the pattern in front of you. Trace the pattern onto the front side of your canvas

Step Four - Paint in the background with your color of choice, covering the pencil markings as you go.

Step Five - After your canvas has dried, hang it up!

Sounds, simple right? How could I have screwed this up and made this take an ENTIRE day, for the first canvas I painted? 

Well, you see, instead of having the genius idea to simply hold the canvas up to light and trace the pattern onto the canvas....I used a knife and cut out all of the letters. This along took a good amount of time. Then with the background pieces, I taped them together on canvas like puzzle.  Next, I finally outlined where every letter would be. These steps again, taking a very long time. Finally I was able to paint in the background.

Boy, am I thankful I was able to come up with the tracing idea for the second canvas, otherwise these two projects probably wouldn't have been worth the time and effort.

Holly Letter

One of the holiday projects on my list to tackle this year is an 'S' made out of holly. It was a fairly simple project and I completed it in one night while catching up on some TV shows we enjoy.

  The Supplies:

Flat letter -- I got my S from Hobby Lobby

Bundles of fake holly -- I used 7 bundles from Hobby Lobby

Red paint to match holly and paint brush

Glue gun and sticks

Scissors 

Step One - Paint your letter

Step Two - As your letter is drying, trim up all of your holly.  I tried to keep them in the bunches that they were already connected in and also wanted to keep a few individual or pairs of holly together to use as filler at the end.

Step Three - Hot glue your bundles of holly onto the letter, covering the entire piece as best as possible. At the end I still had some holly leftover, so I went back over it and filled in any gaps with the individual pieces. 

Step Four - Touch up the holly with red paint as needed. Some of the red coloring had come off of the holly I was working with, so I hit it up with some paint!

Step Five - Enjoy your work! Hang on a door by itself or with a wreath. Hang it on a wall or lean it up against any other holiday decor you already have!  We are enjoying it, hanging with a wreath on the inside of our front door, so we get to see it often.