February

I have a confession to make; I love the first work day of the month for one simple reason. I get to change my calendars and plan the month ahead. I love calendars, I love day planners, and I love making to do lists. One would think with all the love for organizational aids I would be more organized, but that, alas will always be one of the great mysteries of life.

With this change of the month I am looking ahead to what I’d like to accomplish this month. If January was about recovery, I’m going to make February the month of organizing. Those may sound similar, but I assure they are not. In January I was trying to first of all physically put things away and ease myself back into a normal routine. Now that I’m back in my routines, things have been unpacked and put away it’s time to organize what we have.

So my February Goals list:

1. There is a cabinet of our kitchen island that is desperately in need of a good clean out. I’ve started jamming various craft and holiday things in there at random. It now barely closes and I try to sneak in to get stuff from that cabinet in secret as to not have Isaac make comments on the my messy spot. I want to clean it out, toss what I can and turn it into a functioning “craft cabinet”. We have a decent amount of things that we do use and I want it out of the kiddos room so it’s easier to find and keep track of.
2. Speaking of places I hoard things, the guest room needs to be cleared out as well. I set Carolina’s clothes up in there to pack and then left what I didn’t take so…yeah…there’s a lot of stuff in there now. I also took over the closet to make it my gift closet and that was a couple years ago, I need to clear out that space as well. Although anyone who wants to attempt to explain to Isaac that we haven’t had over night guests in almost 2 years and there are non on the horizon and that his fiancée would be really happy to have that space for my stuff should he ever relent and stop keeping an empty room empty. I might add he has an “office” that I have never seen him do “office” things in. If he gets one, I get one!
3. My junk drawer in the kitchen island. Enough said.
4. Our master bedroom closet needs additional shoe racks (and you’d be surprised how many pairs of shoes Isaac has), and I need to get rid of some clothes and I think it’s time I start using my portion of the built in shelves… (Although I do have a small bookcase in the closet that is mine for sweaters and casual pants.)
5. To help achieve all this I want to try and take a day of PTO. I worked most of 2011 without a day off (except company holidays and 3 days I was sick) so that I could be gone 2 weeks. I then went straight back to work. I need a day off badly!
6. Finally I’d like to work on planning ahead a little bit more and make that more of an ongoing habit. My biggest area to work on is Carolina weekends. I really want to try and work on getting the house picked up and good to go before she arrives. She is 8 so obviously a bit of a one child tornado and between the extra stuff that has to get picked up each weekend and clutter from earlier in the week I spend large parts of her time with us trying pick up so Isaac doesn’t get annoyed or getting on her for the mess. I’d rather enjoy the limited time we have with her and not focus on the mess so much, but Isaac is anal about that kind of stuff so I think if I try to get the house in good order to start with we’ll have more time when she’s here to do fun stuff not clean up/pick up stuff. If it were up to me it would all sit there until she left, but I’m not the only person in the house so I’ll be working to get the house as clean as possible by the time she arrives. I will add I am failing miserably at this so far, but I will try harder going forward.

Hmmm…I was going to add read a book of my own choosing and finish it, but I may have over booked…

I did well on my January goals, everything got done and Wednesday has become my cooking night! I’ve had 2 good dinners and one not so great, but 2 out of 3 isn’t bad! Things got put away and souveniers given out. Pictures are printed but not displayed, I’m signed up for the capital 10K in March and I’ve been pretty good about the running and yoga. Now I just need to keep going forward with those while tacking new projects. Let’s go!