Challenge... to myself

It is not really that the new year is here that I have felt I need to change, but it is a result of the series of events of the past year. I am not really happy with my life, I feel that I spend too much of it trying to do things that should not be all that important. I want to simplify my life. There are so many things that I would like to do but I never find the energy or the time to do them. On days that I have time, I am just mentally worn out and cant seem to make myself do them. On days that I feel like doing them, I run out of time.

Organization is one of them. I spend a lot of time trying to get organized, but never really succeeding. Here are a list of things that I need to get accomplished, that are constantly on my mind bugging me:

1. Throwing out those couches of ours that have couch covers on them. I hate those couch covers. HATE I say! Who invented them?? You can't sit on a couch with a cover on it, or the cover gets messed up, needing constant attention, or just looking sloppy when no one fixes it. I don't even care if I replace them. I would rather sit on the floor than have them. It would make the living room appear bigger (it is rather big anyway, but... it will appear empty) but I am not concerned with that. I have found several couches that I would like to get, but I do not want to spend the money on them... not yet. After Jeff's time off work and his current light duty, plus Christmas... we are holding steady financially, but not back to where we were before.. so I do not feel comfortable buying a couch. I could put it on a credit card... but I am trying to pay those off!

2. Cleaning out the garage. I have so many things in my garage that I no longer need or want. I have them boxed (for the most part) and ready to take to someplace and give away. It eats at me .. knowing it is there and needs to be done. But I somehow forget to do it every Saturday morning! The place that I want to donate it to only takes donations on Wednesdays and Saturdays and since I work on Wednesdays, it has to be Saturday. The weekend comes and my mind goes blank. (The cold, wet weather we are having contributes to my blank mine, I am sure...) I also have boxes upon boxes of cleaning supplies that came for "free" (yeah, right!) with our new water "conditioning" unit. I would like to organize the supplies and put them on shelves I just bought with one of the gift certificates we received for Christmas. (The Lowes one that I requested specifically for the shelves! :) NOT the one I was given with specific instructions to spend it on myself!)

3. Doing a clean sweep of my bed room! Ever seen that show? Well, I want to remove all items from the room and go through them one by one to see what we really need and get rid of some of the things I do not want. (LOL, I'm leaving it in, but i just re-read this and noticed that I said what "we" really need and what "I" do not want... hmmmm.. ) For instance... an entertainment center. In my bedroom. Takes up too much room and is a collection magnet for anything being removed from pockets, or DVD cases, Jeff's school books and papers, Conor's toys that he brings in... ugh. I did like it when it was in my living room, but when we got the big screen TV, so we no longer needed it. Jeff wanted it in the bedroom, I did not. I didn't win that argument, obviously... The one problem with that is I have a lot of pictures on the shelves of the unit, and I really have no where else to put them... so, I would need a little corner hutch or something for the living room for the pictures. Again.. don't want to spend that money.

4. A better system to deal with the mail. Every day I get so much junk mail that I can't stand it. And you can't just throw it away, right? Because I am paranoid and think if just my name is on the paper or envelope, that I HAVE to shred it. I cannot toss it into the trash. I've seen too many specials on why that is just opening yourself up for identity fraud. Now that I am writing about it, I know there are probably several people out there with my exact name and how do I know that they are shreading their mail properly so that someone does not steal our name? Hmmm? I guess you really only need to shread the items with account numbers on them. From the people who already have your information - your creditors... Those credit card "pre-approvals" that come EVERY day... they would require a SSN or something to process, so it is not like someone could just send out that application and get a card in my name, right? But I shred it all anyway... which takes time.. you have to open the envelope, get all the papers out and get any goop off of them (that sticks those fake cards to the paper and would cause my shredder to have problems) and run them through the shredder a few at a time. Yes, I have a new shredder that says it will shred up to 10 pages... but it lies. If I try to do more than 3 or 4 it jams and I have to take it apart and pick little pieces of paper out of the teeth with tweezers just to get it to work again. That really sucks. And I tend to get behind in my shredding.. not able to do it right away when I get the mail and it piles up.. then it takes even longer. Whew!

OK, now that I have fessed up to my top 4 mind eating problems... (you know how things just eat at the back of your mind to get them done...) maybe with some people to hold me accountable reading about it, I will actually do it! Once I get these things accomplished, I will let you know and add to them the other things that I want to do!

More than likely #3 will not be done anytime soon since I would need assistance to do so, and Jeffrey just started back to school and will not have the time... So. I will leave it anyway. Or check it off if I can just get that entertainment center removed.. and find homes for the rest of the things on it. :)