It continues...

So I'm continuing to follow my new home organization guru, the FlyLady, and I've done pretty well keeping up with her. I've been "FLYing" since a few weeks before Thanksgiving, and I really think I'm making progress. Sometimes I look around my house and think, "Really? I still have all this junk and crap?! What have I been doing? I feel like I'm always doing a little something, yet there's still so much more to do." I might start to beat myself up for not doing more or not having time to get it all done at once.

But then I get one of my daily e-mails from the FlyLady about taking baby steps, doing one thing at a time, a little progress is better than none, the house didn't get dirty and messy overnight so it won't be all put together in a day, etc. Those little reminders are a God-send.

Case in point: we've decided to expand our family by adding a cat to the mix. Although we had bad luck with felines last year, we are trying again. Well, we needed a place for the fella to go, and especially a place for his litter box. It seemed the laundry room would be a good place, but there was a bunch of junk on the floor and everywhere. I got in there and started flinging. Old bags, a pillow case of batting/stuffing from a project from Christmas two years ago, a bunch of aprons, and a "mystery bag" of things that had been sitting on the floor since I fully moved into the house (2.5 years ago!). That mystery bag contained my rain coat (I've been borrowing Justin's when it rains), my hand mixer (I've been wondering where it was...and frustrated over the 2 sets of beaters for the one hand mixer we could find), an old and dingy bow from when C was much littler (would have been 2 years old), and a bowl of dried-on mystery food (complete with spoon stuck in there). What a relief to get that off the floor and out of there! I literally get scared to go through those mystery bags, mystery food containers, etc., but this experience shows that it won't kill me. Better to just do it and get it done!

Since I was on a roll (and it is the zone room of the week), I set my timer to declutter the entry/dining cabinet for 15 minutes. I put things in Justin's car that needed to go there, threw away maps of hunting spots around Starkville (Justin hasn't been in probably 3 years or more), tossed lemons that had dried up beyond recognition and shoes that have needed to be repaired since I first moved to Memphis (3 years ago!), and generally got rid of junk!

Sure, there's still plenty more that needs to be done around the house, and I need to get the Christmas decorations put away this week, but what a relief to have these two scary things taken care of! If I can go through and toss things that have been lurking for 2-3 years, I can definitely take on the new stuff in the house: little by little.

Glad to be making some sort of positive progress...