My Favorite Motivator

My all time favorite organizing blog is Wanting What You Have. 

 

I found this blog a few years ago when Ryder was about a year old and I desperately wanted to have a schedule. Don't get me started on my obsession with schedules. As someone who is a total type B personality it might sound odd that I am so strict with them.

 

 So I googled "Stay At Home Mom Schedule" and Heather's blog came up. 

 

At first when I clicked on it I thought I had found just a random post about a schedule amidst a bunch of talk about what brand of diapers is best and other useless crap.

 

Boy was I wrong. This is such a freaking gem of a site. This woman is the organizing and cleaning and list making queen! And she does it all without coming off as pretentious or having it all together. You know how some people that are naturally organized, list making people, will claim that they don't have it all together and that they are "messy too". Most of the time that is BULL CRAP. 

 

This wonderful mother actually does have days like me! And I am one of the messiest people I know. One of my favorite posts from her is A Crap Family Morning. She talks about how when her daughter opened the car door as she was dropping her off at school junk mail and sippy cups fall out onto the ground. 

 

This is my life people.

So last night while George was bathing the kids I stood in the living room and looked at my wrecked area and wanted to cry.

 

For most people, the mess alone is motivator for them to clean. It makes their skin crawl just seeing a spoon with peanut butter on the coffee table, a food covered high chair, and clothes and toys EVERYWHERE. 

 

Not me. While I do LOVE a clean house, (honestly who doesn't) I just HATE HATE HATE cleaning. I told my dad once that it's because I was never taught how to clean or organize. That's partly true I think. Growing up we had a maid. For as long as I can remember someone cleaned up after me. All I had to do was come home and put away my clothes on Thursdays. They were always neatly folded on my parent's bed ready for me to just stick in a drawer. That's it. 

 

So now that I am an adult who has kids and a husband I have to figure out how to move from standing in a living room looking around me wanting to cry to action. 

 

I always, always, always, come back to Heather's blog. Boom, there it is. A post entitled, "11 Tips to help You Get Motivated to Clean". Seriously God, THANK YOU!

 

And this is my favorite one:

 

#1 Silence isn't Golden.

Put on Upbeat Music and it will give you energy and change your mood.

 

So, without even reading the rest of her tips I got up, turned the TV onto Pandora, put it on a John Mayer station and got to work. 

 

And I kept cleaning for a solid 45 min until we had to put the kids to bed. Even after George got done bathing the kids and we dressed them we both kept cleaning while the kids played in their rooms. 

 

It was magical people. Music really did help!

 

As much as I love reading design and wedding blogs none of those can give me ideas about how to get my house in order. I'll say it again, it's one of my favorites.

Do you have trouble in the motivation area of cleaning? Or is the mess alone motivator enough to clean? I wish it was for me, but honestly, I can step around and over toys all day long and it not bother me in the slightest......until it gets WAY out of hand....like to the point of no return.

 

I mean when I was in high school(and lets be honest still to this day) my friends would joke that they were going to ride in the dumpster if they rode in my car. One obsessively organized friend of mine told me I should install a full sized kitchen trash can in my car. I'm seriously considering it.

Let's Make A Plan

Sometimes my need for things to be pretty makes buying essentials really hard. I mean its January 16th and I STILL haven't bought a planner for the new year. I just haven't been able to find one that meets all the criteria I want. I want it to be a monthly planner with wide open spaces of lined paper for me to jot down lists and doodles and whatevers.

But above all else, IT MUST BE BEAUTIFUL.

Guess what? Most people have already bought their life organizers so it is slim pickens over at Barnes & Noble and Target. Slim. Pickens.

Just today though, it occured to me that I dont really need a fancy weekly/monthly planner with all sorts of areas to write in. Let me tell you what I do need. Just a simple little monthly pocket calendar that I can easily flip to see whats coming up overall. Im a stay-at-home-mom. Im not going to be scheduling 5 different things on one day with two kids. Maybe when they are older, but for right now Im still sane. One or two commitments, max. Perfect to jot down in a little square :)

And as far as my list jotting and doodling goes, I am SOLD on these guys. $12.95 for three beautiful notebooks. Go here to get them.

Now, back to the monthly pocket calendar. Lets see, when you think of a pocket calendar what do you think of? Ugliness? Maybe some sort of kitten or puppy in a field of sunflowers? Maybe a Thomas Kincaid image? Maybe a "funky" (dear God help me) cross with some quote about reaching for the stars? Um, you are correct if you pictured any of these things. That's mostly all there is.

Until....

I stumbled across this on Etsy.

I love it. Simple and modern and just what I need. I can know what's going on here and scribble all I want in my notebook. And for only $11.50 I am happy to purchase this. If you think these are the coolest planners ever you can go here to check them out.

Do you like having notebooks to jot down in or do you have everything in your planner? I'm glad I have finally found a system that works for me. 

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Monday! Ryder's birthday is Wednesday so we will be partying it up over here!

Weekend run-down

 We went to the Arboretum and had fun

 

Our awesome friend Jarrod designed George's logo

And I chipped my top front tooth on a ring pop. Sorry, no pic for that. Its pretty hideous.

It was a lovely weekend overall. Gah where is this month going though! I know its only the 5th, but its only three more weekends until Christmas! This morning a wave of stress hit me about my forever long To Do list. We have our Christmas decorations up, which includes our Christmas tree, Ryder's little tree, a little something in our entry way and an Advent Calendar. I dont go crazy with decorations. I need to confess though, our advent calendar is little muslin bags with numbers for each day and are supposed to have a few little candies for the kids. Um, I have yet to fill the bags, which means that days 1-5 havent been taken down :/ .

It is on my list of things to do today though, so tonight we can just catch up on all the days we missed! 

Added to my list is getting my tooth fixed and taking care of the ticket the State Trooper gifted me. He shouldnt have. Thanks for the errand!

Are you overwhelmed with things that need to get done and gifts that need to be bought? Or do you buy throughout the year? I read somewhere that after you make your Christmas To Do list you should assign each task a specific day. Maybe I should go do that right now.