Update & Happy Friday!

Well, week one of becoming more disciplined is done...and it has been great! Here's how it went:

It started off a little slow. For the first couple of days it was mostly just about doing little things around the house. This worked out nicely since we had decided that the guest/storage room needed to be torn apart and reorganized earlier this month. (I say we because it was the hubby that really kept me motivated to keep going. Normally I would have taken one look at the room and just backed away closing the door behind me so I didn't have to see the mess. Just being honest here!)

Here's a mid-way picture:

Yikes.

As you can see, it was LITERALLY torn apart. We had so many baby clothes to go through since as they grew out of them they were pretty much just shoved into the first available cardboard box. So that was the first thing we tackled.  Now they are nicely organized by gender and size in storage containers. We then went through everything else and either got rid of it, put it in it's appropriate place in the house, or organized it in the closet. And this is what we now have:

The large pile of things in the corner of the room is the stuff we have gathered to get rid of as part of our 730 things challenge. The plan is to save it for a garage sale this summer. (Now just to make sure the kids don't discover any of it. I already took flak last week for throwing away memories!)

We are now also ready for company! (This is a not so subtle hint for family and out of town friends...)

Next up was the laundry room. (I realize that these aren't really little things that I was tackling this week but the point was that I just did little bits each day.)

Ugh. The laundry room.

It had just become the dumping ground for anything and everything. But, no more!

It's nothing glamorous but...ta da! Now I might actually feel like tackling the piles of laundry that are not so slowly growing upstairs. Hm. We'll see.

By the end of the week in the challenge I was to narrow down something that I really wanted to form into a habit. This was tough to choose JUST ONE to work on because right off the start I had a list of SEVEN things that I would like to be more disciplined in. I ended up choosing tidying the kitchen before going to bed because it seemed simple enough for me to manage to do without getting discouraged. And it was! But I changed my mind a couple days after because I had other things that I wanted so I could see more immediate results in myself, not just my house. Now my habit is waking up at 6:00 am to exercise and spend time with the Lord. This works out perfectly because I am able to listen to a podcast or audiobook while I honor God in my body through exercise. I realize I am only a couple days into this but so far (other than some mid-day tiredness) it has been really great and I feel really good!

Next week I'll be posting some recipes using...beer! What!? (For anybody reading this that knows us knows that we do not drink. However, we received a 6-pack of beer for Christmas through a random family draw and me becoming oh so frugal decided that I'm sure I could do something with it!) If you aren't already a follower, please consider it 'cause really, you know you don't want to miss it!




Seriously though, they were delicious.





Happy Friday, everybody!