So after posting my 1st blog last night I spent the next 4 hours working on trying to fix my laptop, which hasn't been working right for a couple of months. It's only a year old and is under warranty and Dell has tried to fix it remotely to no avail and then followed the steps they sent me to preform to remove everything from the PC and start it from the beginning to fix it... also to no avail.... which I found out about 4 am after working on it all night. So basically, yay for me. Really today was kind of a blah day all in all, being stuck here with boyfriend and the kids getting serious cabin fever but me not being able to do much with the leg issue but I'm not going to let the day go by without doing even a little something!
So of course I'm exhausted this morning. Because of my leg injury I've been sleeping downstairs on the recliner or the couch for the past couple of weeks. Sometime around 9 am my older daughter came up and poked me in the neck to wake me up. "Can I play dress up?" she asks. "Sure," I respond groggily as I quickly drift back to sleep. The rest of the house quickly woke up and I continued to drift in an out from the chair happy for the moment that only because of the leg injury the boyfriend was taking care of the morning routine for the kids.
I slept for another hour or so but eventually had to get up and face the day. Today was the 2nd day of the rest of my life, for Pete's sake, I had to wake up before noon! But admittedly, I wasn't much up for making major life changes today. I knew I had to do something, but I hadn't exactly wrapped my mind around what exactly that would be just yet.
After doing some work around the house and helping the girls clean up the playroom I decided the best thing I could do for myself today, and for anyone else in my house, was to take a shower. That may sound silly, like... "that's not really working towards Living Your Best Life, Tracy." But trust me, with this boot on my leg, and the pain that it causes me, taking showers is one of the hardest things I do these days. But we were having company, so, for their sake, I decided to give it my all.
Now, for some real work. It's Sunday, most of the day is gone, and we have company coming for dinner, so I don't have a ton of time, but I have vowed to do something so now that I'm clean, it's time to get hopping! (figuratively and literally... ba dum bum...)
It's back to the playroom for me. My daughters have definitely inherited my lackadaisical approach to housework and the biggest place that shows is in the playroom. I have a lot of trouble getting them to pick up after themselves or take better care of their things. As you already know I have a problem with buying too many things... this is something else that you can see major evidence of just by walking into the playroom. The kids are spoiled, it's safe to say. Not just by me, don't get me wrong, Grammy and papa and various other loved ones have also contributed to this problem but... I will admit that it's mostly me.
Part of Living My Best Life has got to be teaching my children better lessons so they don't get to this place. I want them to want to take better care of their things. I want them to learn organization at this age and not just want to implement it, but actually to implement it. Here's why I say that: Probably starting around junior high and continuing all the way until I graduated college, each year, and sometimes a few times a year, I would "commit to get organized." I would buy separate folders and notebooks for each class, all color coordinated, of course. I would get a new planner, and I would painstakingly enter everything in my life in that planner. I would make sure that every single assignment got written down and that I only took notes for each class in that class's notebook and store that class's papers in the correct folder. I would be so diligent about this that I knew I would never forget to do or lose homework ever again. And this would last for an average of 4 days each time. Then I was back to my old scatterbrained ways and living in a mess again. I must have something like 142 discarded planners in a box somewhere that have like 51 weeks of empty space in each one. I want the girls to know and do better!
What better way to start organizing than by getting some bin action going on!!?? I have to say, I love me some bins. I have bins so small that all you can keep in them is a couple of apples up to bins so big that you can store an entire large Christmas tree in one, and tons in every size in between. My parents and sister make fun of my bin fascination, but I really, truly believe that if I can somehow get everything in my life organized into bins, that it will simplify my life. I understand that this is probably not a fully sane belief, but I'm holding on to it nevertheless. On a side note... I have large stacks of gift bags that I have saved over the years inside other gift bags (to reuse, you see, so I don't have to buy new ones for people all the time... even though I end up buying new ones for people all the time). My sister says that she's pretty sure gift bags are one of the top things on the list of what hoarders hoard. Is this true? I haven't googled it, so she could just be making that up to make fun of me. Anyway... I am thinking about her saying that right now and wondering... are bins on this list? Probably. But I'm not going to dwell on it.
So I decided that what I need to do to the playroom is get in there with some bins. The girls have all these little sets of things that we lose half of generally within minutes of opening the package, and I want that to stop! So bins are the answer. Bins are almost always the answer! There's not much time but I have some newly purchased bins that have "playroom" written all over them. So into one small bin goes Ava's small tea set. Into another small bin goes Olivia's small Princess figurines. Into another small bin goes the girls' Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Into a larger bin goes Ava's Ikea tea set. A larger bin yet becomes home to both Mr. Potato Heads and all of their accessories. A bigger bin becomes the new home to all of the Barbies. (I have hopes to relocate the Barbies soon, as half of them went in the bin in their current state of nakedness also because the bin is already overflowing. I have to come up with a better solution for fully clothed Barbies and also something for extra Barbie clothes and accessories... I'll probably have to get some new bins for that though...)
These are the only extra bins I have right now, and our guests were coming any minute, so I had to stop at this point. But I am LOVING this idea. Even more so, I am loving the idea my step-mom told me about last night, about how when her daughters were growing up her ex-husband built this shelving unit that went the entire lent of one wall. There were 2 shelves, probably 12" - 18" wide so the kids could easily store things right in sight all the way down the shelves and on top of it. I am loving this idea for storage and organization. I want these shelves built and I want them built now! Knowing the boyfriend (who finally changed the porch light today 5 months AFTER I started asking... also of note... AFTER I slipped on the ice on the dark front porch steps) will pretend to want to do something like this but in reality will talk about doing it for months before finally forgetting it was ever mentioned, and also knowing that I don't know a set of pliers from a wrench, this is probably a pipe dream. But I'm going to prepare for it as if it's really going to happen! And when I have those long shelves someday hopefully in the not so distant future... I want to be prepared with the bins!
So I'm going to invest in more of these adorable little lid locking bins. I have some in pink already, and I know they also come in blue. There are about 4 different sizes of them, I think. I'm going to start stockpiling them and organizing more sets and groups of toys into each one. Then someday I'm going to line them all up on my new little playroom toy shelving system. It's going to be awesome. I'll post a picture when it's done. Today was a small step toward this goal, but I'm psyched about the future of this project in my mind.
OK so today's step towards My Best Life wasn't very exciting for you, probably. But trust me, it was pretty exciting for me! I have big plans for this playroom and for the rest of my house. Be patient with me wile I try and achieve those goals! I'll have more to discuss soon, I'm sure.
** Extra note... as I was hitting the button "publish post"... apparently I fell asleep. LOL. But I'm happy that when I woke up it's still the 2nd so I'm still on track!
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