I’m back!
I just spent a fantabulous two weeks focusing on my family and mostly ignoring the internet. I now have a ba-jillion blog post ideas, but thought I’d share about my break first.
If you didn’t notice I was gone, it was because I did write some things ahead to schedule for the week after Christmas. Did you know that’s my BIGgest week of the entire year here on the site? People go Decluttering Crazy around 7 p.m. on Christmas Day.
A little time off work plus a bunch of new stuff plus putting away Christmas decor plus being stuck inside while it’s cold = people being motivated to PURGE.
But I wasn’t even in my house on December 26th. Or 27th or 28th or 29th.
We spent Christmas at Disney World.
When I planned the trip back in March, I figured that even though it would be crowded, at least it wouldn’t be hot. (We don’t have the option of going off-season.) I didn’t know that Christmas week through New Year’s Day is THE busiest week of the entire year at Disney. But thankfully, my tunnel-vision personality which allows me to NOT see clothes piled on the dresser lets me get great joy from planning out every detail of a family vacation. We never waited more than fifteen minutes in a line and rode every ride we wanted to ride multiple times.
Walking through the master bedroom without tripping? I have to MAKE myself care about that.
Squeezing every last memorable moment and ounce of value out of a family vacation? That’s fun. Fun is important to me.
Yes. I have issues.
But now I’m back, and it’s time to get my own house back into shape. We did spend the last two days of the break decluttering, putting away Christmas stuff, and cleaning. My house feels ever-so-much more livable.
I’m always amazed at how I can physically feel the lack of the weight of a mess once it’s gone. Even though I didn’t notice the weight when it was there.
There aren’t a ton of pictures from our Clean House Overhaul (minus the master bedroom which I didn’t even attempt). I guess I was not in the Slob Blogger Zone.
The main thing I was excited about was getting my gameroom back. My 11yo has decided he’s going to be a musician. He saved up to purchase a drum set a few months ago.
For a (long) while, it sat partially assembled/unassembled in the gameroom because the directions were completely useless and no one who lives here has a clue how to set up drums. Then a drummer friend came over and helped us set them up, but they still weren’t in the right place because the right place was taken up by a Foosball table.
The Foosball table finally moved (with much grunting and finagling) and it was time to move the drums.
But then, because we’d just decluttered the boys’ room, I had another idea.
Imagine my delight when I asked my Drummer Boy if he’d like to put his drum set in his room instead of in the gameroom and he was all for it! Wahoo for one less big thing in the gameroom!
So while the room is far from perfect, there’s space. Floor space. Plenty of floor space for my brand new TEENager to have friends over for the night.
(Yes. I’m the mother of a teenager now. Yikes.)
See how there’s Bonus Clutter in the picture above? That’s what happens when things are in a “temporary” spot. If I’m going to have to deal with that big thing eventually, what’s the big deal if this other random stuff stays there a while?
Blech.
After the drumset left:
For real, that picture above is looking pretty fantastic for around here.
After a little moving around:
And that, my friends, is the picture three days later. After a group of smelly boys slept in there. Not bad.
How was your holiday?
P.S. In case you’re on Facebook and wonder how I was so “present” there while gone on vacation, my lovely assistant scheduled those ba-jillion posts for me after I told her which links to share and wrote out “blurbs” for each one. That way, all I did was check out your comments and “like” them, with no time pressure to be on the computer.
P.P.S. I’m hoping to catch up on email, blog comment approvals, and facebook messages soon, but it may take a while.
--Nony
Pssst….the first week of December was gloriously warm, far cheaper and pretty much empty! File that away for next time, because once you have seen Disney at Christmas time, oh boy! Did you get to see the Candlelight Processional?
To do all that during that week, clearly you are a family of early birds…we’d have been closing down the parks at 2am!
We are definitely early birds! We got there as early as possible (and MK opened at 7 a.m.!!!)
haha…Knowing how you work is as important for Disney vacations as trying to keep your house decluttered and somewhat clean! Indeed you can get a lot done before the regular folk like us roll out of bed LOL! But once, just once, you should be back in Adventureland at 1:55am when you can look back and forward and not see a single soul. Magical!
We did do that once. ON the last night, when we knew we’d be able to sleep in the next day, my oldest and I went back at 10:30 p.m. and stayed until 1 (when it closed). No one else had stayed awake to go back. We had a blast, but Space Mountain was still a 40 minute wait, so we appreciated our walk-right-on-three-times-in-a-row mornings!!!
Not much de cluttering going on here. Very very hot so essentials done by 10am then nothing until after the sun goes down. It is summer in Sydney. Swimming us the highest priority!
Sounds just like our summers here in Texas! (Which I love and totally miss right now!)
Wait, you have an assistant?! Wooooow! Good for you!
It’s great to see you guys got to spend some qualitiy time over the holidays!
And of course a belated happy new year to everyone!
I know! Doesn’t it sound cool?? But really, I couldn’t keep up otherwise, and barely do as it is!
We also did Disney fairly cheaply, but it took us a LOT of research also. You should write a blog post on how you did it. I think a lot of people could benefit from it. (Our trip was several years ago, so my information would be obsolete, if I could even remember it!)
Disney is a vacation that takes lots of research and prep to do it right! I find that fun, but I know some people don’t!
Count me in as someone who “discovered” you in the past week. I spent the past couple of days listening to your podcasts, as I worked towards decluttering the garage. I’m back to work now, but I’m pretty pleased with the progress I made 🙂
I was at Disneyland during that Christmas week. Wow, it was so crowded. We didn’t get much accomplished ride-wise, but with two little girls, it’s all about the princesses and characters anyway.
I’m so glad you found me! And yes, the crowds were unbelievable.
“I’m always amazed at how I can physically feel the lack of the weight of a mess once it’s gone. Even though I didn’t notice the weight when it was there.”
That. Priceless. And every single word of it is true.