Homemaking This Week

This week we are detail cleaning the Living Room, Porches, and Pool House.

Yesterday I made sure the walls were dusted with the Swiffer just because it was easier to get everything.  I worked on sweeping the cobwebs and dirt off the front porch and the porch/entry to the Pool House.  My guys took care of the back porch and getting all the cobwebs off the walls inside the pool house.  My youngest son's weekly job is to dust the living room, so that will be done on his day of choice.

Today we did windows in the living room and front porch.  We didn't get to the back porch or the pool house because my youngest son and I went a little further and scrubbed the shutters, moved the whisky barrels to the back yard, and raked along the front of the house.
Tomorrow I'm going to have them work on the back porch and pool house windows while I do some decluttering here in the living room.  As you can probably tell, Wednesday is decluttering on the calendar, so we need to get that done.  If it is done, we tidy.  I have more books to put on the shelf.  I also have a few shelves to make neat, so there is still work to do.

Thursday is detail cleaning the floor in the living room.  That's where we pull everything out, sweep and/or vacuum, probably vacuum the furniture or wipe the walls, and put it all back.

Fridays are "extra" days where I look at my notebook and pick some things that haven't been addressed and do them.

Saturdays are make up days that are built in just for those times when we have busy weeks and don't get to do the needed things in the room of the week.  We usually do Kitchen work that day too, so we don't have a lot of cooking and cleaning to do on Sundays.

This is my calendar where I keep track of the rooms of the week (on the left), what chore to do on which day (on the bottom), and along the right I usually have all my kitchen cooking/baking chores.  Since I took this picture many of the areas have been redone to reflect our lives right now, which is the beauty of it.  But why do this?

Sometimes we have appointments and we're going here and going there.  But things need to be done.  Whoever is home, can go to the calendar and look at what needs to be done on which day of the week and which room we're in and do it for me.  So, the calendar, in essence, thinks for me.

How are you taking care of the details this week?

God Bless,

Snow in Southern Georgia

This morning our daughter called us to the back porch telling us it was snowing.

Yes, indeed it was!

And not long it will be gone.

Things of Beauty Are a Joy Forever

There are lots of beautiful things in my life, not just now, but every day.  I share them with you, in no particular order.

My coffee mug, my wide mouthed quart jar filled with water, my purple mouse and my laptop, things of beauty to me.

A thing of beauty is snapping a quick picture of these two actually "willingly" touching one another laying together in the sunshine on my oldest son's shoes.  (Yes, it's a time to chuckle if you know Biscuit!  LOL)

A white iris blooming in January is unheard of in Pennsylvania!  Ironically, today they're supposed to get a huge snow storm.  I'll stay here in Georgia enjoying my white iris.  :0)

I've been working on putting my mantle together since September, then changing it a wee bit for Christmas, then remembering we had these beautiful oil lamps.  My wonderful Mr. G cleaned them up for me to put on the mantle.  Now all I need to do is paint.  :0)

My beautiful 14 year old faithful friend who is laying at my feet right now--Rustie.

These two laying together is a sight to behold!  Biscuit has been warming up and becoming downright friendly with Gus now that Gus is 12 times his weight.  LOL

Yes, this is beautiful.  It reminds me that even in our own brokenness we can function and provide beautifully for our families and loved ones in spite of our brokenness.

Yes, Trim Healthy Mama is beautiful, life changing, and it goes without saying that the young man to the right of my book who is lovin' on 2 doggies is as well.  :0)

I found an "Amish" goods store in Tifton, GA.  The owner told me they call them "Mennonites" down here.  LOL  

The things of beauty are beheld every day.  This is but a small representation of what God blesses me with.

God Bless,

Post Christmas Decorating

We took all of our Christmas decorations down and put them all away a few days ago.  Shortly after seeing the drabness of no color, I decided to grab my knitting needles and some bright aqua cotton yarn and went to work.  I have my fabric ready to get to work on my dining room curtains, completely with bright aqua in it, so it was perfect!

The needles are size 11 Caspian wood needles from knitpicks like the ones you'll find here:

Just click the picture...

I bought one set of these needles in size 11 as a gift to myself for finishing a large project.  They were well worth the money!  I love how the cotton slides so wonderfully off my needles.

I love decorating my house.  This house particularly is quite the blank slate.  The walls in our bedroom will be a light butter cream color with darker accents.  I just need to work on the sticky stuff on the walls with Goo Gone.  I have a couple areas done, now I need to move on and get more done.  Unfortunately, once I come out of our bedroom in the morning, it is very seldom that I return until evening bed time.  I need to be sure to work on our hide away, making sure to situate it and make it beautiful and inviting for me and my love.  I've found some beautiful things to put over the head of our bed, bought them for us for Christmas and now I just need to find a weathered/antiqued board for the shelf.

Once we get our bedroom painted, these will go over our headboard.  I am adding lovely and beautiful things that celebrate our marriage in our hideaway.  Why?  So it will be a peaceful haven and sanctuary from the world for the two of us to find solace.  I hope to finish the bedroom in one month, complete with curtains, paint, clean, neat and tidy furniture (with the help of my husband ;0) ) and moving on to another room.  LOL

I am so excited to get these changes done.  

To be continued...

God Bless,

Organizing After a Move

Sitting at the (very loved) table with my oldest son and hubby
playing cards with the sweet scent of a "Sweet Potato" candle.

I know that many of you have moved quite a bit more often than I have as an adult.  You could be a military family or your husband or wife's job relocates you every couple of years.  So, this post is probably "preaching to the choir" as they say.  For me, though, it is sweet reflection over the past year's journey, making realizations about myself and my family.

I started decluttering years ago, thankfully.  I have been using the FLYlady method of doing things since September 8, 2001.  That's a very long time!  Now, I haven't been "gung ho" all the time at every single step of the way, but it has certainly helped me to keep most of the clutter at bay.  [Confession:  As I type this, there are papers cluttering up my coffee table that Lord only knows where they come from!  It's all good though because I know that my young adults can go through it and decide what needs to be kept and what needs to be pitched and take care of it for me!]

I began decluttering in earnest preparation for our move south probably in October 2014.  I had requested at that time a firm answer from my husband whether or not he'd be retiring the following May so that I could make plans to either stay or move.  [Thankfully, he chose to retire.]  I started with books.  I knew that once I went through all the books on the book shelves, getting them put in to boxes to sell, it would be easier to pack up the ones that I wanted to keep.  I went through them with the young folks so that I didn't throw away anything that they wanted.  Surprisingly, they released more than I ever thought they were willing to release!  I was so glad!  This was an ongoing process, too.  I didn't do it all at once because I needed to have surgery in February 2015.  Once I felt like doing things, I had the kids bring me more books that I went through while sitting on the floor.  They did the heavy lifting for me, taking the boxes once packed and labelled to the attic to get them out of the way.  Once the shelves were empty, I gave the shelves to a friend to use.  The books we no longer wanted were sold at our homeschool group's book sale and whatever didn't sell went to Goodwill, never to enter the house again!  Oddly enough, there were more books stashed throughout the house that I needed to get rid of too.  I put those in our yard sale.

The yard sale:  We had a yard sale for 2 weekends, getting rid of lots of stuff.  Once that was over, we packed the leftovers up and took them to a storage unit where a local lady stored leftover yard sale times to sell for a charity.  Those things never came back in to the house.  [Are you noticing a trend yet?]

Once all those things were gone, we started to pack up the house in earnest.  We were still finding things to pitch.  I went through every paper I could find to either file or burn.  We burned a lot of stuff from the garage, so it wasn't a big deal to burn more.

We still had a "give away" pile and we found ourselves giving more stuff away still.  The plan was to sell or give away most of our furniture except for a few pieces that were meaningful to us as gifts from grandparents, or they were antiques.  We ended up keeping one love seat instead of giving it away because that friend didn't have room for it in her new house.  It was a godsend, though.  We have seating here in our living room for it! :0)

Once all of our things arrived here in GA, the unpacking commenced.  I found things that I forgot I had, made a home for them and moved on to the next thing.  I also found things that made me scratch my head and wonder "Why on earth did I keep that?" and put it in the give away box.  Every so often we get the opportunity to bless someone with the contents of our give away box.  We had double just about everything since we had 2 kitchens in PA.  So when we heard of a family who needed things due to a fire, we purged even more!  It felt good too! :0)

I am finding that as I go through boxes, I relive old memories of when that item was purchased or given to us. A lot of times I still find myself saying, "Why on earth did I keep that?!"  I'd love to say that right now everything has a home and everything is in it's place, but it isn't.  I have more shelving and storage to buy to make that happen.  I am saving for some nice storage because it will be in my office where those items go.

I know that there will be times when something isn't fitting right where I put it and I'll think about how to do it differently and it will bug me until I figure it out, but eventually it will happen.  Sometimes I will find something that will fit "just right" at a yard sale to help me get something organized.  It is a wonderful way to adjust to fit the new space.

I am also finding that the organizing of my home after the move began "before" the move.  Ten years worth of accumulated stuff was dwindled down considerably in a matter of weeks, but it continues to be dwindled still, as I continue to get through those not so essential items to get things organized and feeling more like "home."

I'd love to show you what I'm doing differently here (for a variety of reasons) than when we were in PA.  I'll save that for the next post, though.  A little hint is given in the picture above.  :0)

God Bless,

Work Steadily Continues

This picture of my youngest son's room prompted my oldest son to do something like this with his room.

This is what his room looked like when we moved in and got all of his things settled.

As you can see, there is a small-ish mural behind the head board and bright dark "pink" trim.  My son decided to go with a dark green and light tan/cream trim.

I think it looks much better than it did! 

The trim is no longer bright dark pink!  It took a couple coats, but it is done!

Within the past couple of days, we've purchased some fabric for his curtains.  Next month and the following month, we're going to use the allotted portion of his budget for new bedding and a new rug for his room.  

In other areas of the house, we're continuing to plod along, slowly at times.  Some things take precedence, like making a leaking faucet stop, while other things--like getting the sticker residue off the walls--not so high on the "to do" list.   

We continue to work on getting the running of the home working better.  The laundry and dishes have been the biggest boon to our existence.  Yes, I know it is that way for most folks, too.  For us though, our laundry room diminished in size greatly in comparison to how things were in PA.  Looking at things now, it has been a blessing.  Everyone keeps their own dirty clothes in their own rooms.  They sort their own clothes in to a small square basket whatever they decide to wash first on their own laundry days.  Their small basket goes back and forth from the laundry room to their bedroom with their clothes and bedding, while their color coded hampers stay in their bedrooms, thus decreasing the clutter in the laundry room.

This is the system we've come up with:

Mondays-Oldest Son's Laundry Day

Tuesdays-Daughter's Laundry Day

Wednesdays-Youngest Son's Laundry Day

Thursday-Momma and Daddy's Whites and Reds

Friday-Momma and Daddy's Blues

Saturday-Towels & Bedding

For now, the kitchen responsibilities are:

Daughter-Washes Dishes & Loads Dishwasher

Oldest Son-Puts Dishes Away

Youngest Son-Wipes counters, Microwave, & Table

Meals:

Breakfast-DIY

Lunch-DIY

Dinner-Momma makes dinner a couple days a week, when I can't due to appointments, Daddy makes dinner, or one or more of the kids make dinner.

This is where we are in our lives currently.  I make meals for my hubby and I for breakfast due to our special diets.  The kids get whatever they feel like having whenever they're hungry.  Our oldest has stomach issues, so we may eat something that does not set well or is unappealing to him at the time, so he waits until his stomach settles to eat.  

Our lives are drastically different than what we've ever done before.  Things continue to change and we continue to work on everything to get the best solution for our lives the way we are now.  We don't do things the same way other people do, I'm sure.  But this way works for us right now, and it's ok.  I'm striving for having dinner at the family table more regularly, so we're moving in the right direction.

Work on the house and our lives continues. It continues to change, continues to adjust, nothing stays the same.  That is as it should be.

God Bless,