28 Day Organizing Challenge

I'll be the very first one to admit, I am not the most organized person at least not in some ways. So I happened upon an organizing challenge (cause I've into the challenges lately) that fits the bill. Its the 28 Day Organizing Challenge hosted by Laura over at her organizing Junkie website! There's different categories and prizes. Now who doesn't like a chance to win a prize?

I've decided to tackle my scrapbooking room. Its messy, its cluttered, its disorganized and it needs help! I love my scrap space as its my own space so I don't feel that it needs to be spic 'n' span but it should be tidier!
This is the view from the door. My shelf is filled with my scrapbook albums, my pictures and various and sundry. The cat likes to scratch her nails on my albums so they've got to be moved higher. Beside my shelf is a card catalogue filled with embellishments and stuff. Another shot of my shelf.


And here's a shot of my workspace and desk. With two small kids, there are tons of papers and crafts that come home. I don't keep everything but I keep enough that it tends to pile up before I file it away. I have a box for each child for each Grade but getting them to each box...well, that's another thing!

This is the shelf above my desk. You can see the knick knacks and crafty stuff the kids have made for me. The baskets below also have a multitude of stuff in them which need to be sorted out!

Stuff, stuff and more stuff. Here's the corner of the room packed with well, you guessed it, stuff. My hubby has promised to put up a lower shelf or two there to help with storage.

This is a newspaper stand which contains a lot of my daughter's scrapbooking/craft stuff.

So that's my room that I hope to have organized by the end of the month. It's already homey, and I hope to make it even more cozy and homey! If there's some space in your home that needs organizing, join me in this challenge. Did I mention that there are prizes up for grabs?

Let's Roll It All Into One, Shall We?

* I admit to not working out much this past week. I've been to my Zumba class, went for a few walks but haven't made a concerted effort to really get back into it.

* Having said that, I haven't been snacking...much. A little here and there but nothing crazy which is a good thing. Snacking at night is lethal I say!

* My printer is out of ink so my Motivation wall is well, motivationaless. Last night my daughter wanted to print something out and we told her we were out of ink. She proceeded, unbeknown st to us, to leave reminders about Ink in various places around the house such as in my book, on my lamp, on her Dad's lamp and on my closet. I had a very good chuckle about that, even a LOL for realz like and told her so this morning how amused I was.

* Soccer and scheduling is driving me to drink or at least to stress out. I'm a planner and a scheduler and I *hate* not knowing what my schedule is like. I know its a minor thing, but its one of those things that really, really bothers me and stressed me out! We don't have a soccer schedule currently for our daughter who plays indoor soccer. We had the next 2 game sked but that was it. So this upcoming Saturday was going to be a busy day for us with a soccer game in the morning, my son's basketball game at noon, an out of town birthday party and then soccer evaluations at 6. I had it all worked out and then....BAM, they changed our soccer game right smack dab when the birthday party was to start so needless to say, we've cut that out of our day and my daughter is quite disappointed.

* I have been de-cluttering. I've gotten rid of a whole whack of old magazines, some old VHS movies that really if I ever want to see again, I'll just buy or rent the Blu-Ray, some bath toys and other things! Feels great to let some stuff go!

* Alas today is Wednesday and I almost forgot to weigh in this morning. I'm happy to report that I am down 0.9 lbs from 123.5 to 122.6! Check out how everybody else is doing over at the Sisterhood!

Let's Get Organized!

I love this and I love the web! One of my "goals" for the year is to be more organized, and less cluttered and I've discovered 2 challenges to help me with this. (my word of the year should have been challenge I tell ya).

Amy over at The Finer Things has decided to do a 730 in 365 days declutter challenge. Make your home lighter by getting rid of 2 items/things per day (give or take). While I didn't sign up until today, I have been doing this since January started. Little things, maybe but none the less, I'm getting rid of it. Here's my motivation to really get going on this - I'll post updates and keep track right here on this blog!

Yesterday I came across this: The Organizing Challenge. The goal is to tackle a room or small area of your house during the month of February and have it in top notch shape by the end of the month. My scrapbooking room is in dire need of a good cleaning/organizing so this is perfect too!

Join me! I seem to be asking that a lot lately. LOL!

Binging & Purging

And not the eating kind either, thank heavens.

No, I'm going through the paper that's accumulated in our house. Specifically the kids school paper work. There's so much of it and I really can't keep it all or else I would drown in a sea of paper, I'm very sure. I read Ali Edwards blog and she (and along with many others that have left comments) have some really great ideas for keeping those "must have" school items. I also like her idea of combining it into a 12 x 12 scrapbook binder type and integrating different page protectors into it. You can read about that here. Now, if only I could buy a whack of albums for a good price, I'd be all set for that!

Currently I have a pizza box for each Grade labelled for both kids and yesterday, I tackled Tana's Kindergarten box. Keep in mind, that I have already dwindled this stuff down at least once before. She had 4 duotangs full of chants, poems and songs and really, do I need to save those? No likely not so out they went! Its now down to a reasonable sized pile that I can live with and when I get some page protectors (gotta love Dollarama), I can put the good artwork and stuff into those. Whee!! This makes me happy.

What to do with the bigger pieces though? I've heard the suggestion of framing them? Okay, great idea now who wants to bankroll that for me? Framing can be quite expensive and those bigger pieces just can't be scanned properly. I've put some of the bigger pieces up in my scraproom but I just don't have enough wall space to put them all up and they don't stay up on the walls most of the time. What to do? Suggestions (and donations of $$) welcome! :-)

Next up, sorting through those "bigger" pieces and deciding what to keep. Stay tuned!