My Small Obtainable Challenges

    Lately I have been feeling like the back seat driver in my own life.  As the back seat drive I shout things out, but in the end I have no control of the car, I just have to sit back and go where the driver takes me.  I just feel like my life is getting away from me, I feel a little out of control.  I am the master of plausible excuses, but really there is no excuse for this.

    Instead of just sitting back and being the victim (the victim of what I am not sure), I have decided to take some control.  I need to make some really powerful efforts to get out of my little funk.  I have so many things that I need to do, but that is overwhelming to think about.  I have decided in an effort to reclaim my life, that I will make baby steps toward my ultimate goal... a clean and organized life house.

    Lately every time I open my fridge I cringe.   That fridge was pure chaos.  A smart person would have realized that it was a half hour to an hour job to clean and organize the fridge.  In the long run it would be time well spent, oh but that's not the way I think.  It seemed like a lot of work, and so I put it off.  Packing lunches was a nightmare, as was pretty much anything involved in extricating food from the fridge (see above embarrassing picture).

    Yesterday afternoon I bit the bullet and cleaned the fridge.  I was pretty afraid, I am not going to lie to you.  There were a few items that I was unsure what they used to be.  For that matter I was unsure if they were animal, mineral, or even from earth.  As I always do when I clean out the fridge, I angrily assured myself that I will never let this go this far again!  I always do.  I'm more of a thinker and a planner than an actual doer.  I discarded long over due food items, half full juice boxes (why in God's name do they insist on putting in a half finished juice box?  We both know that they are going to forget about it, and it will end up making a spilled and squirted sticky mess of the fridge).  This time I was prepared.  I had bought containers from the dollar store for storage, and to separate and organize food items.  If everything had a place, then it would be so much easier to keep things clean and organized, well at least that's my theory.

    I know have a clean and organized fridge.  I feel really good about tackling that job, now I may have the strength to tackle a few more awful jobs.  Baby steps, baby steps is how I will kick this little funk to the curb.  Today's job, God help me is to clean and organize the laundry room.  I can assure you that there will  be no before and after pictures from that job!

Getting Organized For This Year's School Year.

    Every September I make the resolution that "this is the year I will be organized!".  Every year it lasts for a week if I'm really lucky.  I desperately crave organization, but am really just too lazy and disorganized to make it stick.  I am forever giving my head a shake, wondering what will cause me to make good on my self promise.  Well this is the year, I can feel it in my bones.

Grace's favourite colour is pink, and she
is preppy, so I thought this suited her.

    This year I have four children in school full time.  If I don't want to loose my mind, I have to do something to get some organization.  One small part of my solution came from my last spring's chalkboard project.  I made a chalk board that would remind everyone of things that they needed to remember as they were leaving the house.  The problem was that all of the kids wanted to write on it.

Rowan's favourite colour is orange and blue.
I decided on stripes for him, although
Christopher informed me that Rowan's was boring.

    I think that I have come up with solution.  I purchased a dry erase white board from Walmart.  It cost $30.00.  I then purchased wooden arrows, again from Walmart.

Riley is all about purple and sparkles.
With Riley the more bling, the better!

    I painted the arrows to match each of the kid's favourite colours and personalities.  I have to admit that I enjoyed that part of the project the most.

Elly loves pink and purple, she's a girly girl.

   Christopher hung the whiteboard just behind the side door that we use.   After my white board had been hung, I attached each of  the kid's name arrows over the top of the board.  I then took my trusty ruler and marked out columns for each of the kids, and used permanent marker.

My pre-painted arrows.

    Now each of the kids can write down what assignments are coming up for them, or what's happening at school.  I am hoping it will help to teach them to be self sufficient (oh who am I kidding).  They each had fun writing themselves reminders.  It will be interesting to see if this makes any difference to our lives.  Wish me luck!  Now for the hundreds of other organization jobs waiting for me ...

My Car Organizer...

Did you notice that I made no effort to clean the car?

    I may have mentioned a few million times, but we're going to Florida this March, in 24 days to be exact!  When we first booked it, it seemed like so far in the future, but now it is in hyper acceleration.  I have so much to get done, my head is spinning.  The trip is booked, the hotels are booked, some of the dining reservations are booked, the house sitter is booked, but there is sooooooooo much more to do.
    We are no strangers to long distance travel, in fact for the most part I enjoy it (minus the "are we there yets").  I actually am pretty together when it comes to planning for the long trips.  We are looking at a 24 hour actual time trip, so I really need to plan for this one!  Last night and this afternoon I sewed up 4 seat organizers.  I had the denim already and the other materials, so it made it easier.

I have the good fortune of owning a cutting board, rotary cutters and a plexiglas ruler.  Scissors would also to the trick.

I cut the denim into 24 inch long by 14 inch wide pieces.  This is pretty much the dimensions of our bucket seats and thankfully half a sheet of brisol board.

I cut the bottom pocket 12 inches by 12 inches.
The top pocket 12 inches by 6 inches.

I sewed the contrasting material wrong side to wrong side (how's that for excellent terminology)

I then turned the contrast material over onto the best side of the denim.  I sewed a half and inch seam at the top, rolled the bottom under and sewed the bottom of the contrasting material.

I found it easier to sew all of my contrasting materials onto the pockets before assembling.

I should add that I cut the top corners off of the denim to accommodate for the bucket seats.  I turned the denim edges under, then sewed the pockets on.  I made one large pocket on the bottom, and sewed across the middle of the top to create two pockets.

I did the yellow hearts material for the girls and cars flannelette for Rowan.  I did some small embellishments at the top of them.  I seem to be addicted to the rag tie so, I added it to the one above. For Rowan's I cut some flannelette into small pieces and sewed them across the top with a fancy button for embellishment.  To attach them to the seats, I turned the top down and created a small pocket to fit thick elastic through, I guess time will tell if that was a good idea or not, wish me luck.

Tomorrows blog.... the activity binders I am working on.