If you’ve read my previous post, you know that I started the year with my first goal being organization. I typically do this 2x/year- my birthday and the start of the new calendar year. My birthday is my BIG new year, and I always want to make sure I’m entering another year of life with as little baggage as possible. I usually spend the week leading up to my birthday cleaning and organizing my personal space. January is sort of a check-in time to keep myself on track.
This January, I wanted to completely overhaul my life and establish structure in every area- home school, how I manage my time, get clear on my goals, and just generally establish order.
I want to first note that I didn’t start in January. No. I wanted to start the year off in a clear space so that I could have the intentional focus to do everything else. So during the final week of December 2018, I began decluttering and cleaning my house. I cleared away large trash bags of STUFF- old mail, toys, books, clothes. I didn’t know I had so much stuff in my house. This is because I went into the hidden spaces and opened up things I hadn’t opened in ages. The stuff that was already “organized,” but were really just condensed junk. Whew! That’s a sermon! For later though.
I threw out everything that was useless or hadn’t been used or even looked at in the past three years. Yes, even the old business cards that I was going to eventually transfer into a database (eyeroll). Also, the old clothes that were gonna be so cute on me when get back down that size. I boxed up clothes of mine and my son’s and drove them down to Once Upon A Child and Plato’s Closet. Got a few bucks to give the kid for spending money.
I threw out old food containers- you know the ones with missing or broken or melted tops? Yeah those. Utensils with broken handles. Bottles of shampoo, soap, etc. with half-ounce quantities of whatever substance was supposed to be in them, because I hate to waste and was gonna shake the bottles until I was sure there was nothing left. Old makeup. I even threw out books. If you know me, you know that is historic.
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All of the old mail that contained sensitive info was put into a book bag so that I could later have my son run them through the shredder. He gets a kick out of shredding paper. He can have at it! By the way, if you live in Dallas or Houston, here are the dates for Resource One Credit Union’s Shred Day events.
Once everything was decluttered and organized,I went about cleaning from top to bottom. I placed new plugins in every room of my house. Then I moved to the car, throwing out the junk, wet-wiping the seats and dash, vacuuming, and putting in a new car scent.
New Year’s Day was spent taking care of me. I washed my hair, gave myself a nice long, hot bath, and put on my favorite scent. Then I saged the entire house and spent the remainder of the day meditating, enjoying peaceful music, writing, and napping. It was so sweet and exactly the loving and pampering that I needed.
Later, I also saged the car.
So all of that created the perfect environment for me to focus on organizing the rest of my life.
In my next post, I’ll share my time management tips and the system I implemented to stay on top of keeping my house clean. If you enjoyed this post, drop a line letting me know what your takeaways were and what else you’d like to see talk about here. Thanks for reading!
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