2010 April 01

Sometimes I love being the go-to mom for my son’s kindergarten teacher.

Sometimes I don’t.

I always seem to get assigned the more difficult party item. Like ice cream. Ice cream can’t exactly be sent in a 6yo’s backpack.

Today was watermelon. Not that watermelon is in season or cheap or anything. Actually, it was watermelon, cut into bite-sized cubes.

Not that big of a deal, except that I don’t do well with melon-cutting for some reason. As evidenced by the large chunk that slid off the table and onto the floor. Oh well, there was still plenty even without that chunk. My “cubes” may not have been pretty, but the kids loved them, and at least I can rest assured that since I brought the watermelon, it had been properly washed with soap and water prior to cutting. (Have you ever considered how many hands could have touched that melon before you got it? And whether or not those hands were properly disinfected?)

Anyway, as for my daily checklist, I was tempted to not do anything today, as my home is already looking bad from a crazy week. It couldn’t be made perfect without more energy expended that I was willing to expend, and school let out early so it felt like a lazy afternoon.

But I at least cleaned the kitchen. And I put the extra hands to good use and let the boys earn extra checklist points by helping out.

Today I:

Made bed.

Emptied dishwasher.

Re-loaded dishwasher (almost completely full already).

Cleaned kitchen.

Wiped up spot where watermelon splatted. (It’s Thursday, so I should have mopped, but was at Easter parties all morning, so I didn’t.)

Did a small/sort-of/can-barely-call-it-a pickup time.

But hey, I did something.

And I do have the beans going in the crockpot and am about to start trimming and packaging chicken for the freezer.

My Decluttering Progress for March

Amy at The Finer Things in Life is again hosting her monthly link-up in her decluttering challenge. Her goal is to get rid of 730 things in 365 days. That’s an average of 2 items a day.

I linked up in January and was incredibly proud of my progress. I linked up in February and was inspired to do better in March when I went back through my posts and discovered that I hadn’t made huge decluttering progress.

So now March is over and I was excited to go back through my posts (my entire blog is about getting my home in order, after all) labeled “decluttering” and see what I had done.

There were 4 posts under that label since my February progress report. And two were more “about” decluttering and not really a report of items decluttered.

I was quite surprised. I thought I had done well this month.

But then I realized that although I haven’t posted about it, hubby and I have been going through box after box of paper clutter. Yes, we’re looking for something, and maybe that makes it not quite as noble, but we’re getting it done. We have a bag for papers that he’s going to take and burn when he goes camping with the boys this spring. And anything throw-away-able has been thrown away. Generally, one 5 lb box of random papers contains maybe three items that need to be kept.

This is huge for us. Papers are our nemesis. I’m guessing that although we still have more to go, we’ve probably purged at least 30 lbs of paper.

But I guess the best news is that we’re not making new piles like we used to. Because I now have a file box, I’m going through mail as I walk up the sidewalk from the mailbox. If it doesn’t deserve to go in the file box, it goes in the trash. It’s truly life-changing.

And as for other decluttering, I’m making a point to create a pile of outgrown or will-be-outgrown-by-next-winter clothing every time I fold laundry. And then the pile goes out to the garage sale pile. I would guess that I’ve purged about a garbage bag full this month.

My main visible progress for the month has been in the master bedroom, where most of the boxes of papers had been shoved during frantic someone’s-coming-over moments. It’s getting better little-by-little in there, but has a very long way to go.

For April, my goal is to completely declutter the master bedroom. I could probably supply an entire garage sale just with that.

Check out the progress of other de-clutterers at The Finer Things in Life.

P.S. I wish that Blogger’s spellcheck feature would accept that “declutter” and all of its forms is a real word. At least on this blog, it is.