Hello Twenty Twelve

I just like the sound of that, twenty-twelve, it rolls off the tongue real nice.

I, like most of us, have resolutions for this year.  My number one resolution is to improve my photography skills, to learn to use photoshop and to print pictures.   I am well on my way to printing pics, because along with the tripod my husband gave me for Christmas, he also gave me a printer.

He has been bugging me for days now to print something.  Yesterday I came up here (craft room) and downloaded the software, hooked up the printer and printed a couple photos.  I noticed that the photos are printing with horizontal lines through them and I also noticed that while the picture looks great on the computer screen that didn't automatically transfer to the printed picture.

Sooooo, I'm off to the first and most important, and totally out of my comfort zone, resolution - improving my skills, which means school.  I have taken the first step to getting started on that.  The local community college is offering classes and I'm diving in.  Stay tuned for that.

My second resolution, is organization and really this is a lifelong process.  To date I have purged and reorganized the kitchen pantry, Christmas decorations, and closet.  My side of the closet though, as the husband doesn't like it when I do that to him.

When we first got together, we lived in a double wide trailer house and the closet, though large for that type of housing, was too small for all of his things and mine too.  To remedy that problem I purged his closet.  It was easy to do since most of his clothes had dust on the tops where the hanger was.

I spent the time doing my homework, paying attention to what he actually wore, and then proceeded to make a large pile in the floor of all the things he never touched.

He was not a happy camper, to say the least, when he came home for lunch that day.  He rushed to the clothes pile and started pulling out the things he wanted.  Like, for instance, the perfectly preserved brown, double knit suite complete with the white stitching from the 1970's, pointy lapel and all.

We went through the clothes and picked some things out that he wanted to keep and let go of the rest and I happily unpacked my clothes and we hung together in one closet.

Ahh, blissful co-habitation.

One thing that I do know is, that to stay organized, you must purge.  Get rid of all the things you do not use, do not wear, and for the kids, do not play with!

When I was a young mother, keeping a clean house was really hard for me.  And really it was a time in my life when I had a lot of things to let go of, both materially and spiritually.

During this time I would wonder, "when will I get my life back"?  It seemed so out of control.  I would cook but not clean, I would wash the laundry but not fold and put up.

Needless to say, the state of my house reflected the state of my heart and mind.

The funny thing is, I grew up in a home that was immaculate.  Beautiful even.  My mother is beautiful, she is the best cook EVER, and our home was always clean.  Her kitchen never held a day's worth of dirty dishes and her laundry never made the kind of piles mine did.

You know the piles, dirty clothes in the floor in all our bedrooms and in the laundry room, clean clothes in piles on the couch and left in the dryer.

Our mornings were chaotic.  My poor little children were whisked off to school after a morning that was crazy stressful, it's a wonder that they ever made it through.  Poor teachers.

Anyway, back to the subject matter that I really want to talk about, organization.

I spent most of my time looking at Better Homes and Gardens, dreaming about a home that would look something like those and then I would get up and look at my house and just feel so depressed.

But then, God ... don't you just love a story that has that phrase in it?  I had been searching for that thing that made it all okay.  That piece that made all the wrongs moves right, that thing that made sense out of the senseless.

That "thing", the missing piece, was Jesus.  Truly.  Jesus made all the difference.  After I gave my life to Christ, He, in turn, began changing my heart and my mind.  He showed me that God was a God of order, not of chaos.

And thats when I decided that I was going to have a house that looked like the rooms I saw in the magazines.  I was going to, at least, make it the best that it could be.

I noticed that with even my best efforts to clean, the house wouldn't stay that way.  I would clean the kids rooms but when they went in there to play, it turn right back into the disaster that it was always in.  I noticed that they had to empty their toy chest to get to the toys they wanted to play with.  And I couldn't keep the rest of the house clean either.  There was just too much stuff.

That is when purging and I became best friends.

My plan was simple.  I bought the biggest box of black trash bags I could find, backed my car up to the back door, and left the trunk open.  As I filled the trash bags, I would go to the back door and fling it into the waiting car.  When the trunk was full, the kids and I drove to town and found an empty dumpster, where I promptly filled it up.  I did this over and over and over that day and by the end of the day, I had a new house and I was a new woman.

That's my history with organization.  Purging is key to keeping things neat and tidy.  It's freeing really.

So this bring me to today's story, a continuing struggle to keep a certain room clean and efficient, my craft room.  I have posted several times on the before and afters of this room and folks I am back in the before position again and these pictures are taken after I cleaned all the trash up.  This is clean!  Hello.

These pictures give me a headache.  Clearly I have a systems problem.  This is one of those "it's going to get much worse before it gets any better" organization adventures.  Yea, lets call it an adventure.  Truly, perseverance will be key here.

There is only one way to work a job like this and that is to break it down into small steps.  I realize that in order to break this into small steps that I should break the room up into work zones like you do your kitchen.  So, the plan is to make a list of all the activities that go on in here.  The ones that actually happen, not the ones I wished happened, or the ones I hope to do some day.  That is step one, get a plan.

Step two, get started.

No step two, get boxes, keep, donate,  and trash.  Yea, that's it.  I need some boxes.

Maybe this should be a black trash bag kind of purging.  Just do it, no looking, no sorting, blah, blah, blah.  And then like presto it's done and I have all kinds of empty storage to work with!

Eh?

Maybe an inspiration picture or two would be nice.  I could do that first.  Yes?

Hmmm.

It's gonna be okay, I can do this.

I know I  can

I know I can.