Happy Monday! It’s a cloudy and snowy morning here in Cute Little Town. The cardinals, juncos, and downy woodpeckers are happily at the birdfeeders. I’m in my fluffy red robe and cardinal pajamas so we’re all cozy here.
I know some people don’t like Mondays, but I do. I always feel like the week is full of possibilities and I have high hopes for what might transpire during the week. I hope your week if full of anticipation for good things as well.
Goals to Increase Peace in Our Homes
The purpose of this post each Monday is to choose and share with each other a few attainable goals that will increase the peace in our homes. (If you are new to my site, you can see the past Simple Living This Week posts.) I enjoy hearing what other women are doing and I hope it helps us all feel less alone in our homes.
My goals this week are continue making progress type goals rather than starting new things.
Goal 1 – Continue weeding out my clothing and shoes. I have been slowly working on this the past few weeks. As part of my word of the year (Beautify), I am getting rid of everything that is worn looking or I just don’t like. I have been buying new things for myself, something I have not really allowed myself to do much for many years.
Goal 2 – Finish cleaning out and organizing the big drawer in the kitchen. I started doing it yesterday, but need to finish it.
Goal 3 – Find 30 more things to remove from the house and take them to Goodwill. (I have many posts tagged Clutter if you need ideas, inspiration, or encouragement in this area.)
What big or little goals do you have for your homemaking this week? I hope you will share them with us in the comments and then come back on Friday to let us know how it went!
Artwork: “Interior of a Frame Gilding Workshop” by Louis Emile Adan
Hope vs. Fear – Streams in the Desert
My goal this week is to catch up on writing letters.
I am planning on doing some of that this evening. I need to send out Caroline’s school pictures that we got late due to only being able to do retakes.
Happy letter writing!
Sallie
Hi Sallie,
1. Reorganize a corner of our living room. It seems my many pieces of daughter’s art, along with some books we thought we’d use sooner than we have and [photos have become a hodge podge pile and I’d like to find places that do them justice:).
2. Sit down and get some registrations and payments finished for events and activities that the kids are interested in. This type of thing really isn’t that time-consuming but I tend to avoid it sometimes.
3. Bake another batch of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies:). The tin appears empty!
Sounds like you had a lovely morning yesterday. I love the idea of cardinal pajamas:).
Hi Erin,
I’m slowly making my way toward sorting through books and purging more of Caroline’s older part projects. I’ve gotten rid of so many books over the years because there simply wasn’t any place to put them. I’ve gotten to the point where I want to get rid of a bunch more. The same with art work. We have purged all along, but I think we can go through her stuff and probably get rid of half of it now. The distance of time makes it easier.
Decluttering for me is like peeling layers off an onion. I can rarely do a radical purge.
Sallie
Here’s what I did.
Goal 1 – Continue weeding out my clothing and shoes. PROGRESS made on this one. I didn’t intend to finish it, but I did make progress.
Goal 2 – Finish cleaning out and organizing the big drawer in the kitchen. DONE (And, wow, does it look better!)
Goal 3 – Find 30 more things to remove from the house and take them to Goodwill. DONE as soon as we drop the things off
I wanted to get caught up on writing letters this week, and I got most of them done.
Woo hoo! I bet being stuck at home in a blizzard probably helped. It looks like you were in one of the areas that got dumped on. We received about 6 inches overnight so it’s pretty, but not terrible.
Sallie
“The distance of time makes it easier.” That’s exactly it, I think. I find my daughter is often comfortable with moving her artwork out much sooner than I am. I tend to struggle with nostalgia, so tidying or clearing things can take a long time as I stop and reminisce. Then, every so often, I need to just do a clean sweep and discipline myself not to look closely!
Hi Erin,
I struggle a lot with nostalgia. I also connect “things” very closely with the person who gave it to me or created it.
When Caroline was younger, she would not part with AN.Y.THING. she had created. A few years ago she got past that and can now weed stuff out. If anything, she’s gone the other direction and is now willing to get rid of things I’m not. LOL!
I wrote a bit about dealing with sentimental objects in the post below. It is something I have always struggled with.
Sallie
https://sallieborrink.com/7-day-declutter-organize-challenge-day-3/
This post applies to. Most people don’t understand the concept of sunk cost that comes up in the quote I shared in the sentimental objects post.
https://sallieborrink.com/sunk-cost/
I finally got my fabric all sorted and put away! Now I’m slowly working out from that bastion of cleanness into the rest of that room……