Making the Most of Your Time

I am apart of a group called MOPs. We meet two times each month. This is my first year being apart of this group and I'm enjoying what we do.

A few months back, we were given a handout after a "lecture" about how to make the most of your time as a mom. I loved the handout because I love anything that has to do with organization and simplifying your life. Here are some of the ideas that stuck out to me most:

Assess Stuff - the more you have the more you have to deal with.

Organize - a place for everything and everything in its place.

Plan Ahead - meals, errands, cards, gifts.

Prioritize - most important stuff on the "front burners."

Say No - a positive word, a worn out neglected family comes with saying "Yes" too much.

I plan to address the first 2 from this list right now. I'll come back and talk about how the other 3 are coming along later.

One of my goals this new year is to "deep clean" our house and to purge it of all unnecessary items. I have also wanted to organize high impact areas (ie pantry, bedroom, cupboards, etc.)

Some of the projects I've completed so far:

The Master Bedroom:
I went through every piece of clothing and all the dressers to get rid of and reorganize. It all came to a head when I walked into our room last week and found this:

I'll admit that I'm a bit embarrassed to be showing you all our bedroom in this state, especially because this messiness is so not me, but I know that if ours is like this then there are probably others out there that are in a similar state. A lot of the mess was simply because we had gotten new items from the holidays and just didn't have a place for all the extra stuff. Time to purge!

Remember this post? Well last weekend I attacked the first order of business - the wardrobe- and the outcome is this:

I also used one of Graham's nap times to get the pantry back into shipshape. I threw out old food, rearranged like items to all be in one space, and wiped down all the shelves. Now every item has a place:

Before -

After -

I also attacked Graham's room. I realized once I got in there that the majority of the room hadn't be cleaned or reorganized since before he was born. The main "roadblock" for me was that every time I thought to go in there and clean it, it was during his nap...I'll post the pictures of Graham's room in a future post so this one doesn't become too long.

Next up on my list is our office. I want to throw out old bill statements and such to make sure that our file cabinet is simplified. I'm also trying to share the space in our office with my newly created sewing and craft area.

Anyway - I hope this encourages you to start on a 2012 clean up of your space. Let me know if you want my help - I love projects!