HOME Week 2.

Week 2 of any type of new thing, a new diet, a new job, a new school semester, a new workout routine…it doesn’t really matter what it is, week 2 always seems the hardest. I suppose this is because the new and exciting has worn off, the routine begins to set in, and life just starts to get in the way.

That is just what happened this week here at Marshall Manor. I had a lot of GREAT intentions to get a lot of things accomplished but for one reason or another I just didn’t really get that far along on my plans and goals.

Now that doesn’t mean that I didn’t get anything accomplished so here is a little bit of what did take place this week:

The Kitchen

If you read along on my post last week you know that this month we are focusing on cleaning, organizing, and decluttering the kitchen. This week’s big challenges for me were cleaning out the “junk drawer” and dcluttering the dish rags, towels, and pot holders.

I made it my biggest priority to clean out that dreaded junk drawer. For as long as I can remember there has always been a “junk drawer” in the kitchen. This is the one drawer that hides all the things that should have a home but if I’m being honest just don’t have patience to put in the proper place. That drawer is always the one I just open and toss things in.

One thing I am really trying to do is reduce the amount of random clutter we have in the house. The “junk drawer” has been a catch all for a lot of that. With me cleaning it out and organizing it now I am working on being more intentional with the things in the house. I take time to ask myself is something I am going to toss in the drawer is necessary or if I can just get rid of it. If I need to keep it then I intentionally find the proper home for it.

The before was really a tremendous hot mess but I am IN LOVE with the final product.

Now everything in the drawer are things that have a home. There is a container for batteries, a container for my seed packets for when we start planting the garden again (so very soon!), and a container for our sauce packets…because everyone needs a place to hold all their sauce packets. One of the Raddish Kids boxes contains my teas for my tea of the day I’m doing on my Facebook page. The other box is the current Raddish kids kit that we still need to cook our way through. And finally the little container is our matches. We have a gas stove and sometimes it gets a little cranky and needs some encouragement to get going. Not often but there are moments.

My other project was to declutter my dish rags, towels, and pot holders. This has been a bit of an on going process for me lately so I didn’t spend as much attention on it this week. I did toss out a few dish rags that have seen better days as I was doing laundry and I am debating on whether or not I want to store my pretty new Christmas dish towels or if I want to keep them out a bit longer. Other than that I didn’t have much to focus on in that area.

Home Goals for Week 3

This week my kitchen goal is to clean and organize my spice cabinet. I had it under control but then the holidays happened and it got a bit out of hand again. That shouldn’t take me to long to get finished but it needs to be done.

My other big goal for the week is to get back on top of the laundry. I have this really bad habit of getting it caught up then for some reason a switch flips in my brain and I think “Oh look the laundry is done. I don’t need to do it again.” And then after a few weeks I realize that we are drowning in the stuff again. So I am really going to be intentional about getting the laundry not only washed and dried but ACTUALLY PUTTING IT ALL AWAY. I know it is a lot to ask. I may have to reward myself with chocolate or something.

And my final goal for the week is to get the kids school work sorted and stored. Again, I have fallen into a bad routine of just stuffing it in the hanging folder holder on the back of the door but not really doing anything with it from there. I have contemplated working on a new system of scanning in the important documents and creating a digital file of all their work so I don’t have to keep all the paper copies but I’m still not sure I have sold myself on that idea. Until I do it will be filed in their binders as usual.

Wrap Up

So there you have it. My wrap up of week 2 and some of my goals for week 3. I am really hoping that I can continue to work toward getting this house under control. The more I get things organized the more organized my mind feels and that makes things go so much more smoothly during the day. I hope everyone has a great week. Share with me some of your goals! I would love to cheer you on.