It Takes Time

It has been a while since I’ve even paid any attention to the blog. This new season of life has been a bit of a shift and I needed to figure out first where the moving pieces were headed. That is taking emotional and physical energy. The moving pieces are still moving, they are not settle yet. I’m learning to shift with them as they go.

One thing I have been learning in these past few months is to pay attention on what old rituals and habits I want to bring to the new season and what new habits, rituals I want to create. There is a joyful freedom to that. It has been feeling good to say “no” to somethings and “yes” to new things.

One of the things I am bringing with me from the old season is my journey to find a way to live a simpler everyday life. The reason for it, is to try to minimize the stress and overwhelmed feeling I had been living with. I want to pay attention more to the everyday and not the big events that happen only once in a while. I want to work on making the joy more about the journey than the outcome. It has not been easy and I’m still working on it.

Here is what I’m working on right now:

• Creating a simpler way of living the everyday - paying attention to what I say “yes” to and creating habits for the must - dos. My planner and books on household management are helping with this.

• I’m saying “yes” to doing something that brings me joy into my everyday plans. Right now, this is reading in the afternoons, sometimes embroidering and sometimes taking naps.

I’m excited to continue to grow and learn new ways to do things. I’m also looking forward to slowing down a bit, which I’ve been learning, doesn’t mean not doing new things and working on what you want.

Starting the Set Up for 2022 Planner

I always start the set up and figuring out which planner to use around this time of the year. I like to take my time and have fun setting it all up before the new year begins.

2022 will be a year where our family will be starting a transition to a new season in our lives. It is overall an exciting transition and also with it some bitter sweet moments. Our oldest will be graduating high school, our youngest will be finishing his first year of high school and as for me, those two things mean I get to figure out a new schedule for my days.

Because there will be a bit of moving pieces, I decided to minimalize the planners/binders I use to run the household. I have figured if I streamline my process, it will allow me to continue with the organization I like and need, but also the information will be all in one place.

In the past, I have had a main weekly planner, a household binder and a daily planner. The weekly planner is where I plan ahead a bit. Monthly and weekly. The household binder is where I keep the family information. Budget, school info, family members info, gift lists, fun lists, cleaning schedule, etc. and the daily is the one I use throughout the day as things shift and new things pop up.

I love using a weekly/daily planner combination. The weekly gives me a bird eye view of what the week looks like and it helps me plan things around depending on how busy or slow the week is. The daily, focuses on one day at a time.

This year coming up, because I’m trying to streamline the process a bit, forecasting that it will be a busy and emotional year, I am taking away my weekly planner and instead of combining a monthly bird eye view with the household binder. But keeping my daily planner for the one day at a time moments.

The planner I’ll be using for the household is an Erin Condred LifePlanner in the monthly layout. It has the month and 8 note pages. The note pages will allow me the freedom to place any category needed (budget, for example) every month, but a category that doesn’t need a weekly spread.

I will be posting my set up journey here and in Instagram if you want to follow along.

End of Summer is the perfect time to start a Planner

This is the time when I start coming out of the denial of summer coming to an end. The slow, late morning starts, no schedule days, etc. When a house has school age kids, the whole household moves through the seasons with the kids.

But once I get in the mindset of preparing the household for school, I start getting excited. This is the time for new routines or bringing back the ones that worked out before. This is why, I think, is the time to start a new planner or starting using a planner for the first time. It is planner season!

This year, especially for our family, is the beginning of a new season. Both kids are officially out of elementary/middle school and in high school. The school routine we had last school year does no longer serve us (add to that a weird virtual/quarantine year to boot).

A planner, for me, is a great way to help create new routines, helps me organize the days, new schedules, household projects, etc. I tend to use the beginning of the school year as a sort of a second “New Year’s”.

The planners on sale right now are academic year (July to June). By having a planner following the schools’ calendar, I am able to write down all of the schools’ holidays, time off, events, etc in one place, all at once. It helps, still in the glow of slowness of summer, to start thinking/trying out new morning routines, household chores, shop for the supplies needed and scheduling appointments before the chaos begins. It gives me a bird eye view of what our days might look.

If you walk to any of the big stores with school supplies like Target, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, they all have at this time a year a big selection of calendar/planners. The covers are so pretty and a wide range to pick from, there is a big selection on brands, styles, colors, paper quality and price range.

I think by starting the school year with a planner it helps organizing the home (mentally and physically). There is a central place to write down and organize all the information coming our way from the schools.

I hope you have a great school year and stay tuned to see what planners I found out there.

Looking Ahead to the Next Month to-dos

I have always been in awe of how my brain comes up with all the things I need to do next month, when I am trying to concentrate on the things I need to do today.

As a stay-at-home parent, I am not at a desk most of the day.  When a to-do for next month pops into my head, in the past, I would grab a sticky note and place it somewhere or I would be so sure I would remember it when the time came.  Which it didn’t work for me.  The sticky notes would get loss and no way, did I remember it. 

Ever since I have used a planner, it sits on top of my desk open to the week/day and I will walk by and make notes on it as the day goes by, it is a habit now.  The planner became a solid place to make notes as they come up and I no longer use sticky notes that get lost.  

One of the habits I come to do a bit is adding to-dos for the next month near that month calendar.  Depending on the calendar/planner you use, it might have different spaces available.  I use a blank page in front of the monthly calendar to add a brain dump of any to-do for that month that pops into my head the month before. 

It is sort of planning ahead of the planning.  It sounds like a lot of work, but is not, it is just sticky notes in one place.

For example, as the month of April is happening and the thought of “I need to plan for Mother’s Day gifts/get together.” I will go to this page in May and add it to the brain dump.  Next week when I sit down and plan the month of May, I will refer to this list. 

Not all items will make it to the calendar, but the benefit of it being out of my head and a place where I will remember them makes a difference to me.

What do you do when items pop into your head?

Planning the Household Quarterly Goals

As we started April and the beginning of the second quarter of the year, the boxes in front of the @erincondren planner came in handy at the right time.  They will help me organize the quarterly goals and take a look at the goals we accomplished as the year goes by.

Jason and I get together at the end/beginning of each quarter to go over what plans we have for the household.  This might include: big expenditures (traveling, fixing bathroom), DIY house projects (painting, garden boxes), kids’ activities, etc.  We started doing this because at the beginning of a year we would talk about the plans for the year, but mid-year one of us would get an idea and we would act on it, forgetting we might have already planned for something else and it caused some miscommunication and overspending. 

Erin Condren Life Planners, have 12 boxes in the beginning of their planners.  They are blank boxes, which I like the flexibility.  In the past I have tried using them for memory highlights of each month, budget tracking for big expanses or have not used them at all and left them blank.

Since I am motivated right now to use every page of the planner, I have available, I have decided to use it for our household quarterly planning. 

Getting together to plan for the quarter, has helped us connect with each other and make sure we both are still in the same page.  It allows us to change, if we need/want to, ahead of time or remember our long-term plans and keep going.  We started doing it to help us with communicating with each other, however, one of the side benefits of it is the budget.  It has helped give goals to our money and be more conscious about what we spend our it on.

We meet in March to close out Q1 (Jan. to Mar.) and plan Q2 (Apr. – Jun.).  June to close Q2 and plan Q3 (Jul. – Sept.).  September to close Q3 and plan Q4 (Oct. – Dec.). And then in December we close Q4 and start the new year plans.

I usually write down our plans on my budget notebook, and they have been a sort of meeting notes and the final decisions in one place.  I am seeing these 12 boxes in my everyday planer as more accessible and will help me keep track of them more. 

Here is how I have set the boxes up:

I used a month stamp kit from Amy Tangerine (@amytangerine) and Erin Condren (@erincondren) collaboration, which I bought years ago, to add each month on top of the boxes.

I lined up horizontally so I could divide them in each quarter.

Once Jason and I have our quarterly meetings and we decide what we will be working or continuing to work on, I will transfer that information to each box.

Once each item is completed, I’ll check them off.  This step is where I see those boxes coming in handy.  It is a more visual, organized way for me.

I am hoping this helps us keep track of our household goals.  I will let you know how it works out.

Starting A New Planner...in April

I love starting a new planner.  For me a new planner is like starting a New Year.  The possibilities of something new, a blank canvas.  I tend to stick to the same planner the whole year, but once in a while I feel the need to try a new planner.  2021 became that year.  I was determined to not spend money on more planners (this is when I try to not look at the new planners coming out in April and May), my budget can’t handle it.

I usually have two planners, one for weekly planning and one for daily planning.  My weekly/yearly planner is calendar year (Jan-Dec), my daily planner is academic year (July-June).  I keep the calendar year planners as sort of a historical tracking of our daily lives.  My daily planner I throw away after I’m done with it. 

In 2021 I tried to not do a weekly planner and see if I could do with just the daily planner.  I was trying to prove my family that I could do with just one planner, but who was I kidding, I love planners!  And no, you don’t need more than one planner.  One planner is plenty to organized your life, lol 

Mid-January, I realized I work better with the two layouts, two planners.  I tried doing my own weekly, I tried adding it to my home binder (see previous post) and it just was not working.  I was forgetting to schedule my days and I ended up in March just reacting to the day and instead of planning ahead of the day. 

This made remember these things: 

1.      Using a planner works for me as it makes me more intentional on what I want to do in the day.

2.       At night, I tend to have less the feeling of “what did I do today?”.

3.      I need to write things down (I’m a visual person).

4.      The science of writing things down makes you remember it more, is true for me.

5.      I love decorating pages and stickers.

6.      To actually use the planner, I have to like the planner I am using.

7.      It is ok to pivot and change what is not working even mid-month.

I ended up buying an Erin Condren Life Planner.  Erin Condren planners were the first planners I fell in love with and I haven’t used one for a while (I was trying other planners).  I wanted to go back to the planner I know how to use and makes me want to use it daily.  I liked their paper quality, the covers and layout.

Now comes the fun part of setting it up (yes, I set up my planners, this is part of my creative time) and I hope you come along with me and see how I set it up and leave a comment below on how you use your planners, I am always looking for inspiration 😊.

What Does A Simple Life Looks Like?

I have been thinking lately more and more about what a simple life looks like for me. My definition is different than anybody else. I think is because my life is individualized to me. There is such a freedom to acknowledging that. However, it can be much harder to follow through.

When I first starting using planners, I had done a major shift in my life. I went from corporate world to stay at home mom. And even though it was from my own choosing, letting go of the “working mom, working woman” identity was really hard for me. Planners came and helped me find a course to my new season.

Right now, I am back at starting a new season and my planners are back at working over time. This time around is not about losing or gaining an identity. It is more of looking at what I want this season to have and to be for me and my family.

The question which keeps coming up is “What does a simple life look like for me, in this season?” Now with Covid, right now, might be different than hopefully a few months from now. But having this down time is helping me take inventory of the question and process the answers without too much outside noise. Have to look for the silver linings, right?

As of today, here is what I want my simple life to be:

• Financial independence - no debts, emergency fund, ability to pay for college for the kids, our ability to pay for our basic living expenses, extra for giving and for traveling. Love traveling!

• Learning how to navigate the new relationships with my kids and hubby. For the kids this means transitioning from kids to young adults (and they do have their fierce opinions). For the hubby, we have more time for the two of us without the kids. We are realizing we have changed throughout the years. It is a fun time to rediscover each other.

• A day to day routine were I feel I lived on my own terms and doing the things I care for. (This also includes the must-dos for my big picture - I am looking at cooking on this one.) and to not feel the rush and overwhelming feeling in my head. This will allow me to enjoy the sunsets and the everyday small moments.

• Reclaiming my creativity -bring out all the books, bring out the yarn, the sewing machine, the stickers and washi tape and anything new out there I might want to learn.

• Making my extended family and friends relationships stronger.

I don’t think any of the bullet points above are simple, but I think the simplicity comes in learning to ignore the other noises, the other things asking for my attention. This is where my planner comes in. When I am scheduling my month, my week, my day, I am asking myself, does this fit the simple life I want to have?

Simple doesn’t mean easy, maybe the better word would be a “focus life”, but I like “simple life.” The word SIMPLE to me gives me the focus to why I am scheduling the things on my calendar. It helps me find ways on how I can simplify the process on the must-dos (hello - cooking, laundry, cleaning) and safe more of my energy on the bigger parts (hello - relationships and creativity) and to slow down on the day to enjoy the everyday moments.

What does a simple life means to you?

Simple Habits

I have been using planners for over 5 years. Using a planner to me is now just part of my day. This habit is one of the ones still work for me.

This year, I decided to embark on forming new habits in multiple areas of my life. One being health conscious and moving my body more (this year with the purpose of losing weight, but with the long goal of a healthier lifestyle), I also wanted to add habits of taking care of seasonal to-dos for the house. Those two habits are pretty big for me. Here is what I noticed, I was becoming overwhelmed by the big changes, that I stopped doing all of it for about two weeks.

So I am going back to simplifying the new habits. This is where my planner comes in handy. Just the visual part of seeing everything I wanted to accomplish in the month, the week, the days, made me realized why I was feeling overwhelmed. I was adding to many changes at once.

I have decided to put more of my energy into the healthy habits and let go of a lot of the house projects I was going to take care of.

But I have not forgotten the projects. I still chose to continue the decluttering of each room of the house. As far as the Martha Stewart Organizing book, I am still going to use it, but I will be very selective on the projects I add to my planner.

To me that is the beauty of writing things down. It allows me to see where I need to pivot.

Do you take a moment to look at the habits you have and whether they still work for you?

My Cleaning Routine for 2021 (so far)

I have yet to make peace with a cleaning routine. But I might be getting closer.  Throughout the years, I have had different versions of routines.  From whenever was “needed” (hello college years), the fly lady system, the Home Comforts book cleaning schedule, the Clean Mama system, and now one day during the week suggested my Martha Stewart’s Organizing book ( and I think the norm of cleaning).

Besides the college years of “whenever was needed”, all the other systems are good systems.  What I have come to realize is each system works better than others depending on the season.  Right now, the system working for me is taking one day during the week to clean the whole house.

I tend to collect home management books…love them!

Before I started doing that, I was doing the @cleanmama system of cleaning one room per day.  It is meant to take no more than 30 minutes per day. I really liked this system, especially if your schedule is busy.  It is similar to the Fly Lady System.  The Fly Lady System goes by zones, by you touch a zone every single day.  In my experience, these two systems (there might be more out there, these are the only two I have tried) work for me when the kids were little and my schedule was busier, and I really liked them.  There was no way I could spend four hours in one day cleaning with two littles in tow.  Small sections were more doable. 

But as the kids have grown and I have more time during the day to myself, I am able to do it all in one day.  Part of me fought spending a whole morning cleaning the house instead of doing other things on my to-do list or let’s face it doing fun stuff like breakfast with friends, crafts, reading and/or Netflix. 

This is the struggle I have had for years with cleaning.  It is not a thing I crave, I do not get enjoyment out of it, which makes me envious of the people who enjoy it and is part of the thing they like to do (talking about my mom here).  But I do understand the benefits and I enjoy a clean house.  The end goal is enough to make me figure it out.

I decided to try the one day per week schedule because in this season of my life, I can afford to give those four hours to cleaning. Mentally, it helps me organized my schedule the rest of the week.  It allows me for less transitions during the other days.

So far, I have done it for a couple of months and it has been working out.  I can’t lie that it was easy to transition to spend all that time cleaning the house at once.  However, I have noticed that on that day, I wake up mentally prepared for it much easier now that I have been doing it for a bit. 

Martha Stewart’s Organizing book recommends cleaning the house in the same order every time. This helps with getting into a routine that takes less thinking once it is set.  I have also started listening to audio books and podcasts while I am cleaning.  This gives me an incentive for the morning.

The order I have come up with and is working out so far is:

• Bathrooms

• Kitchen

• Dusting

• Vacuum

• Mopping

Items I do biweekly are:

• Windows

• Fans

• Vacuum furniture

This the normal cleaning routine and doesn’t include the seasonal items needed.  There are other items I do everyday that I consider it part of maintenance. Different parts of these everyday items I have kept from all the different books, suggestions I have read. It shows that you don’t need to follow one specific method, but instead one that works for you and your season. I do laundry everyday (Fly Lady), wipe the bathrooms every night (Home Comforts) and sweep every morning (Clean Mama).

Tracking sheets from home planner

I track my monthly items and seasonal in my home base planner. When I was doing one thing everyday, I also had a form in my planner to remind me of the schedule until it became a habit.

What is your cleaning routine?  Have you found one that works?

The Reason Why Keeping a Home Planner is a Good Idea

I have been keeping a house/home of my own for a little bit over 21 years.  In those years, I have learned a few things.  Some of them I wish I would have learned sooner as I know there is still some I need to learn.

For example, I still need to learn how to meal plan and not resent it every time I think about it.  I still need to figure out how to manage my pantry and make peace with cooking every.single.day.

On the other hand, I have learned there is so much tidbits of information we need to know to run a household.  Some of them are big enough that makes sense you would keep track of them, like paychecks or when bills need to be paid, but others are like post-it notes, random stuff in my head that I know I will need at some point, yet I have no where for it to go, like, what size shoes are my ever-growing kids wearing right now, when was the last time I took the car for an oil change, what was that book my friend kept mentioning that she would like and would make a great birthday present?  Who has a birthday this month?

I have found a system that works for me.  A central place of where to write down all this information so I don’t have to keep it in my head.  And that is a Home Base Planner.  Now I call it a planner because I use sections of it to schedule the house projects and keep the meal planning and so on, but it could be a Home Base binder, Home Base Notebook, etc.

I revisit it every December/January to make sure sections still work and to make changes as needed per our season in life. Here is a tour of my 2021 Home Base Planner. 

The first pages are: a year at a glance calendar and my annual date calendar for family and friends’ birthdays and anniversaries.  Then I have ten sections:

1.      Routines – my routines and the kids.  I break them from morning, afternoon and evening.

2.      Monthly/Weekly planning – this is where I plan monthly items/projects for the house and then break them into weekly to-dos.  I use this section when I am planning my week in my daily planner to remind me of those projects and make that commitment.

3.      Budget –   This is one of those skills, I wish I would have learned 21 years ago. But so glad I learned it.  I have a budget for:

a.      yearly

b.      monthly

c.      weekly

d.      daily tracking budget. 

4.      Cleaning – Monthly schedule for those cleaning items that are not weekly and now I am also adding the projects I am learning to schedule from the Martha Stewart Organizing book.

5.      Kitchen – I struggle with this one, but I also know what a difference it makes in our budget and trying to be healthier, so I keep trying to learn it.  I do:

a.       meal planning

b.      weekly grocery list

c.       pantry inventory

d.       list of favorite meals (this one changes as the kids grow and hubby gets tired of spaghetti).

6.      House Maintenance – I have forms for:

a.      A “dump brain” list of all the house projects, big or small, we want to take care of this year.

b.      a tracking form on when a project starts to keep the budget, the supplies, the ideas we have for it, etc.

c.      a tracking form for car maintenance, and appliances and furniture.

 7.      Contacts – I realized in the time of cell phones, I can’t quite memorize what other people’s phone numbers are anymore (except if you ask me my home phone number from 30 years ago, I’ll still remember that one).  I use the contact section for:

a.       our family phone numbers including extended family members

b.      each members’ doctors’ numbers, insurance with the policy # and our agents name and number. 

Really any number we would need a quickly look up in an emergency instead of trying to find the    paperwork where that number is.  I guess is my version of the old address book but only for specific numbers related to the run of the house and its members.

8.      Family – this is the section where I place all the tidbits that would be in my head or some post-it-note somewhere.  I have a list for all four of us with:

a.       clothes sizes,

b.      gift ideas,

c.      mediation, allergies, etc.

d.      the kids school schedule.  They both have different classes every other day, they are in different schools with different starting and ending times, it helps me to have that information on hand. 

e.      a form for each person where I document little wins.  Kid learned to do a hard math problem; I write it down.  Hubby created a great project at work; I write it down.  This is new this year.  We realized in 2020 that days were just passing us by and when we tried to look at what the year was like, beyond the big events, aka – pandemic, we had a hard time remembering the little wins.  Because beyond the big events and the hard 2020, there were some fun, exciting little wins and I want to document them more and celebrate them.

9.      Last section – Christmas.  I don’t use this one throughout the year, however, as the second half of the year begins, I start writing down:

a.       ideas for gifts

b.       Christmas cards design

c.       food we want to try, new events we might want to do, etc.

At the back of all the sections, I have a NOTEs section.  I use it to write down anything that might pop into my head for the house, but I am not sure yet where the information needs to go.  I’ll assign it (if needed) to its own section during my weekly planning time.

By having this home management planner as the central location to keep all the information that comes in and out of the house has helped me keep track of random things and information I need.  It also has given me a feeling of being organized.  The kids and hubby know this is where they need to go to if they ever needed information for the house.  I do not put passwords in it but I do have the basic information.

Now it wouldn’t be my kind of planner if I did not have stickers in them or washi tape or fun decorative dashboards.  It just brightens my day when I open it up and it looks so pretty.  Do you have a Home Base Planner?

Organizing the Craft Area - To be ready for the New Year!

I love this season, there is just something about everyone being in the holiday spirit, and I think this year we are trying to bring the spirit out more.  I also love the feeling of a fresh start, a new canvas.  Even though logistically, I could start with a new canvas any day of the week, there is a momentum in the air during this time.  I think it just gives me something to look forward towards the end of the current year.

Since I will be starting the project of decluttering my house one room at a time during my “House organization year”, I thought I would do the decluttering/organizing of my craft/art area in December.  I am still not done, but I am giving myself the last few weeks to do it.

At the end of 2019 I took a wall in my garage to make it my craft area.  It was a hit or miss if I went in there and used it, but when 2020 quarantine came along and I had three extra people in my house, all day, every day, the craft area became a beautiful refuge.  Sometimes just to watch a movie and eat a cookie without having to share it!  The thought of bringing out a couch in there has crossed my mind a few times. But I did craft. I made ornaments for friends, I did memory keeping and decorated the planners. I want to continue to use the space.

Since I started using it more, I am now a bit more aware of the rhythm I need in there and the way I need to store supplies. 

Here is how it looks so far:

The biggest hurdle I have come up with so far is:  What to do with my old planners and notebooks?  I do not have enough space to have them display on a shelf, and still have room for other supplies.  For right now they have been placed in a box until I can come up with a solution.

Organizing this space has motivated me to do more crafts and really carved out time to do so.  This feeling will give me motivation to organize the house!

 On Thursday I’ll share how I am organizing my home binder and getting it ready for the new year! 

A Day of Crafting

As part of my organization project, I decided to get ahead of the game a bit and make birthday cards in advance.  I enjoyed this craft and it helped me slowed down a bit on my day.

I counted how many cards I will need throughout the year (about 60, with some room).  I need about five in January alone. I decided to make about 30 cards by the end of January and make the rest throughout the year.

My goal is to have the cards ready to be mailed and/or given, and alleviate some of the stress of trying to find a card at the last minute.  I want to make sure I let my friends and family know we are thinking of them during their day.  I just love snail mail and I feel it makes it a bit more personal that way.

Here is how I have done the cards so far:

I bought at Michael’s a package of their 5x7 blank white cards and a package of the 3x4 brown cards.  They come with the envelopes as well.

To decorate them I am using: stamps (It was so much fun to bring them out again), Cricut, scrapbook paper with birthday themes (Sadly, I had the paper in my scrapbooking supplies for a while and just had not used it), markers, washi tape and stickers.

It was so much fun to sit down and play around with the stamps and the paper and get my imagination going on how to decorate the cards.  I have made about 15 so far.  Since I have not done cards in a while, it took a moment to get in the groove of it, but once I started it felt so nice! 

Scheduling 2021 Monthly Projects

I took about two days to sit down and write concrete dates on each month and planning projects for the month of January.

Those items were:

Birthdates and anniversaries – I keep a perpetual calendar (undated by month) where I write all the birthdates/anniversaries for family and friends. (I keep this list on my home binder and update it throughout the year if needed).

School dates – days off/conferences/special deadlines, etc.

I have done the two items above for a couple years.  The items below are new and these were prompted by the suggestion in Martha Stewart’s Organizing book.

Doctor Appointments – I was able to write confirmed appointments down, however, this exercise reminded me to add a “to-do” item to call and make annual appointments. i.e., In May, I need to call and make an appointment for July for my daughter’s annual checkup. 

I have struggle with this one in the past.  My kids always end up with annual check ups two months after their birthdates, which is not a big deal.  Until she needed a sport checkup for the school tennis team and the doctor would not do one because she had not had her annual checkup.  She ended up being bench for the first couple of games. Woops!   I am hoping this scheduling ahead will help.

Seasonal Housekeeping To-Dos – Martha gives a nice list of what those seasonal to-dos are.  However, I chose two from the list.  I want to start slow and not feel overwhelmed.  I am hoping starting slow will give me a better chance to continue doing the projects throughout the year.

          For January, I chose to stock up and organize the pantry and to deep clean the washing machine. I picked these two items since I have never done this before as part of my “keeping house” routine.  I planned for January 11th to take inventory of the pantry and January 20th to clean the washer.

House Declutter project – One of the recommendations in the book is to declutter the house.  This is meant to maintain the house easier.  Instead of doing the whole house in one month (remember I’m taking this slow) I am doing one part of the house per month. 

For January, I will be decluttering the entryway.  I have added this as part of the whole month and not in a specific date.  I am interested to find out if I will need to set a date for it or if I will accomplish it without one ahead of time.

New Habits – In the past years, I have done lists of all the new habits I want to start in the new year (some of them are repeated year after year, like exercising).  But I never thought of scheduling them in my planner ahead of time as appointments.  In 2021 one of the habits (a repeat), I want to form is to go outside and walk for a minimum of 20 minutes at least 3 times per week.  I took the time and schedule a 20-minute walk on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 

Here is what I realized by doing this exercise of scheduling the month ahead.  I hesitated.  I hesitated mostly in the new habits.  It felt as if there was no point in adding them on my calendar when I would be walking or cleaning the washer machine, because what if something popped up?  What if something better came along? What if…?

But the more I thought about it, the more I see the point of doing them ahead.  It is giving a priority of what I want to accomplish.  It might give an opportunity for those new habits to be formed when I do not leave them to chance of “when I have time”.  I know I want to take care of the house and I want to work on my health, so why not prioritize them first?  I think the moment of hesitation was a bit of moment of reflection on whether I truly wanted to do it.  Now I just have to stick to it, treat it as an appointment. I guess I will know by February how it worked out.

Xo,

Maria

Step One to Begin Home Organization Project

Part One (Organizing) on Martha’s Stewarts Organizing book starts by saying this: “No organizing toolkit is complete without a well-tended planner.”   I have been using paper planners (I have tried using my phone and it just didn’t work) for about four years and I truly enjoy them.  The fact the book mentions a planner as the first step gives me hope. 

I will be using two planners to help me during the year for home organization:

1.  Simplified Planner - Academic year (August 2020 to July 2021) Daily layout.  I tend to use academic year because it is easier for me to keep track of the kids’ school dates.  This lay out allows me to break down my day and take notes as needed.  I need to write things down to feel less overwhelmed but also as reminder of what needs to be done.

@simplified

Daily Layout

2.      Home Binder – this is the family planner (I have been using this system for a year).  I add all the information needed for the year in this binder.

 For example:

a.      Yearly Budget

b.      List of home projects

c.      Meal Planning (not my favorite)

d.      Information for each member of the family         

i.     Clothing/shoe sizes        

          ii.     Gift wish lists     

        iii.     Medications

Webster’s Pages - A5 Planner (6 rings)

According to the Martha Stewart’s Organizing book the first step is:

·        to plan each month with home maintenance to-dos, doctors’ appointments, and special occasions.

o    She has included a calendar with her ideas on the seasonal items we should be looking for each month.

Martha Stewart's Organizing: The Manual for Bringing Order to Your Life, Home & Routines Book

As I am understanding it, it is worth planning the year with these items at the beginning.  This way it doesn’t go off our radar.

I will be taking this week to sit down and schedule all this information down.  I want to make sure I include:

·        New habits (daily, weekly or monthly) that I need to create.

·        Seasonal to-dos (suggested in the book by month) which I am not doing now but want to add to keep the house organized. 

I will share next week what these items will be for the month of January.  Stay tuned!

Organizing My Home – One Month at a Time

One of my goals for 2020 was to pay attention to the house.  From getting better and more efficient at cleaning it, to organization, to decorating it to make it feel our safe haven. 

Little did I know how much 2020 was going to make all of us spend time at home.

I have yet to finish creating my 2021 goals, however, I do know I am continuing the home organization part and learning how to simplify daily household activities.  I am hoping this type of organization will allow me the time to enjoy a couple of hours of doing something for me without the overwhelming feeling of guilt in the back of my head about not finishing the laundry or cleaning the bathrooms.

I am sure I am not the only one out there feeling the need to decorate our home, organize our stuff, make it a more enjoyable place to live since we have been in them for the majority of the year with nowhere to go.  I feel with all the busyness of our pre-covid world, I had not truly realized the importance of making time to set a schedule for a well taken care-of home and how soul comforting it is to truly feel comfortable at my own house.

The thing is, it takes time to take care of the house.  Between the never ending laundry, meals (I do not like cooking), and cleaning, I have to cross my fingers I will have the energy (mentally and physically) to spend time reading a book without falling asleep or not be short when the kids ask what is for dinner at 10am in the morning or convince myself to not fall asleep during “stay at home movie date night”. I felt overwhelmed and started resenting the whole “housekeeping” part of the deal and YET, I want to be able to open a drawer and know what is in it and want to sit to read my book on my couch and not fixate on the chipped paint on the wall right at my eye level.  I want to feel proud of my house.

I want to create a routine to maintain the house because that will allow me the mental and physical energy and the time to sit and learn new crafts, read, scrapbook, watch a movie, visit museums, visit with friends, make pies or learn to enjoy cooking (see, I am dreaming big!). I want the freedom to be creative without feeling guilty and without giving up on the upkeep of the house.

I happened to see the book: “Martha Stewart’s Organizing – The Manual for Bringing Order to Your Life, Home & Routines” and it spoke to me.  The first page I read was this: “An orderly and organized life calls for creating and then sticking to clear rules, pre-set schedules, and to-do lists that are dedicated to your own lifestyle and that of your family…It will save you from disorganization and leave you free to spend less time on chores, more time for the activities that prove meaningful to you.”  This got me, it is what I have been craving in 2020. The book walks you through the organization of your home by braking into three parts.  Part One -Organize Your Year, Park Two - Organize Your Home, Part Three – Organize Your Routine.  They run concurrently depending on the project.

I plan to follow the book over the next year with the goal of organizing my house and time.  I will be documenting my journey here.  The first step goes simultaneously with setting up my 2021 planner.  I hope you come along in this journey!

2021 Planners on Sale for Black Friday and Cyber Monday – Perfect Time to Get One

Over the years I have read a lot of articles saying if you write things down with a pen and paper you will remember them more and I tend to believe them. I tried using my phone as my planner and just couldn’t do it. I’m a visual person and need to see the whole month or week all at once. I realize other people are just fine using their phone to organize themselves and that’s great. The fact we have the option for both is awesome. If you’re like me and are looking for ways to try out using a paper planner and to take a bit control of our days (whether appointments or making some time to craft!) shopping for a planner on sale might be the perfect time to jump into it.

There have been an increase of planner companies and styles of planners out there than there was before. Here are the sales I know of from some of the planner companies I know of:

Etsy is having their 20% off, there might be small shop sellers being part of the sale.

Simplified by Emily Ley –up to 50% off on their website from 11/23 to 11/30

Erin Condren – 30% off from 11/23 to 11/30

Cultivate What Matters (this planner is more for planning goals) – 25% off from 11/24 to 11/30

The Happy Planner – Discounts vary by date:

Check back to see how I am using my 2021 planners to schedule my days and schedule time to be creative!

Starting a Creative Journey, Beginning by Introducing Myself

I am a mom of two awesome kids, a wonderful hubby and our beautiful dog.  Our family is entering a new season in our lives.  The kids are older and they do not need me around all the time as before.  As a stay at home mom, I now have more time to do all those projects I have been adding to my mental list for the time “when the kids were older”. 

Throughout the years, I have come to love scrapbooking, planners, books (actual paper books, sorry Kindle!) and any office supplies I can get my hands on. While I love looking at art, reading good stories, seeing the beauty of a well-made dress and good photographs, I never thought I would be able to create any of those things.

However, the older I get, the more I realized I do not have to be good at any of those things to try them and have fun doing them. This is a journey for me to try anything that will spark my imagination whether it is writing a story, or creating a blog 😊, drawing a picture, taking photographs or sewing.   I am giving myself permission (as Brene Brown says) to allow myself the time and to enjoy the journey of this creative journey, with as much fear as I have for putting myself out there with this blog, it is also giving me an opportunity to challenge myself and I feel excited for it.

I also come to realized that I can enjoy decorating my house (I have always said I do not have a good interior decorating eye) and I am learning how to run a home, something I wish I would have learned when I first became a stay at home mom.

I have found that is important to organize my day to make room for this creative journey. I will share how I plan my days (with awesome stickers and planners, of course), what worked and what did not so hopefully help others start their creative journey.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog,

Xo,

Maria