Painting: Yesterday I decided to paint a wall red. Loaded the kids up, bought the paint (which involved arguing with the paint guy at Lowes over whether or not I needed primer and I left without the primer) and waited for Addy’s nap. I figured I’d tape off, paint in a few minutes and be done. Ha. Hahahaha.

I should have bought the primer. Mental note: $17 is not too much to spend to save time!!!!!!!!!!

I finished my third coat last night at 1am. Which, can I just say, is annoying since each coat took roughly 20 minutes from set up to clean up. So most of my day was spent waiting for paint to dry. And now I remember why I hate painting so much. The project never ends! And I don’t mind painting but I HATE the cleanup.

Another lesson learned: taking pictures of a bare wall is HARD! I took probably 10 dumb pictures of my dumb painted wall and this is the only one that comes close to showing the true paint color. The rest are way brighter than the actual color. It is a brick red, the adjacent walls are beige/lt tan.

And can I just brag that I did not spill ANY paint on my carpet at all?!?! I also got pretty straight ceiling and floorboard lines, decent lines in the corner and pretty shitty lines on the outside edge (not shown! Haha) but I smudged paint on that bit of wall between the red and the door - do you see it? I DO!

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m done despite the fact that this one wall took almost an entire gallon of paint. I like the one wall but think I need more. I can’t decide if I want to do the wall adjacent in red also or if I want to extend the current wall across the room and into my livingroom. Thoughts? And now that it has color, what else do I put on this wall?!?! Have I mentioned that interior decorating = NOT my forte?

Dog Toys: my dog LOVES them but lacks some fundamental retriever tendencies. She spends great amounts of time chewing them but little time fetching. That’s ok. What I need are indestructible dog toys. She seems to NOT lack a fundamental “kill and destroy” tendencies when it comes to toys and will literally sit and chew until a brand new toy is demolished. We bought a “solid core” toy this weekend and that is now shredded in pieces around my livingroom. What dog toys exist that keep the interest of the dog but are NOT single-use?!?!

Patio Set: Tony bought me an awesome one last year for my birthday and I love it but it is covered in algae from the “rainy season” here in Houston. This algae business is new to me. We didn’t have this issue in Michigan. I remember when we first moved here my neighbor was outside powerwashing her driveway and I thought she must be very yard-oriented to spent her day doing something like that. I had never even seen a power sprayer in use other than by contractors before that! Now I get it: power sprayers here are like snowplows in Michigan! You need them to spray the hell out of the crap that accumulates. Hm.  So my question is: can you powerspray the algae off outdoor cushions too? I have tried Tilex on them, I have tried the Magic Eraser. They are squishy (think couch cushions) so I am at a loss for how to get them clean. PLEASE! I want to get out there and enjoy the weather before it’s 150 out again.

Today’s goals:

• Hammer up door trim in playhouse
• Finishing painting playhouse ceiling
• Get Noah a haircut and go meet some hedgehogs
• Purge my cookbooks and teas
• Work on Addy’s old clothes
• Do Addy’s laundry
• Read another few beads of Eat, Pray, Love

Whew! We had a WEEKEND! It is so nice to have a 3-day weekend when we really need tons of time to get stuff done. It is even nicer to have the energy and motivation for the first time in like 8 years.

The big project this weekend was the garage. Still. This weekend was THE weekend. We were gonna get this baby done come hell or high water. It rained Saturday and so Sunday we dragged out all the remaining boxes (like 10 or more) and went through them all. We threw most of it away or made piles for Goodwill. It was a big, icky, job.

Can I just say right here that we have NEVER ONCE had a completely clean, functional garage? Our first house together didn’t have a garage and then the first house we bought together had TWO garages, both of which came filled with crap already. Let me just say that is NOT the way to move into a new house! We just piled in boxes that never got unpacked and moved them to our last house and stored them in the basement or garage there and never unpacked them again! Our last garage was soooo tiny that there was literally not room for the 2 cars that it claimed to fit much less 9 bikes, scooters, sports equipment, a freezer, etc. It was awful. So this is it - the first time in our entire marriage that we managed to get the garage DONE.

This morning Tony loaded it all (or what would fit) into our van with the seats down and took it in two loads to Goodwill. Here’s the garage after we took away the goodwill piles/boxes:

So during Addy’s nap we dragged all of the stuff out and here’s what it looks like all over my driveway:

See the little walkways?! Haha. While everyone was emptying out the garage, I was grocery shopping. I almost turned around and left again when I pulled into the driveway to this mess.

Then we worked and worked and worked. And worked. And finally we ended up with this NEW Goodwill pile:

And this Garbage pile:

And the small pile of stuff we kept and moved back into the house:

And the finished result:

Here’s the left side of the garage. This is where most of our sports equipment goes and eventually all those books will be sold and we’ll either pitch those bookshelves to make room for toys/bikes or we’ll put them to good use.

And the back of the garage - we still have some room on the shelves but this is where we keep our extra pet cages/supplies, all my packing supplies, painting supplies, gardening supplies, tools and our adult bikes/trailer. We threw away the snow shovel

And the right side of the garage is the previously undiscovered sink (currently without faucet ) and cabinet, our freezer, the kids bikes and scooters and lots of shelf space that we don’t need yet. Maybe we’ll keep towels for the pool out here in the summer!

So its not pretty but it is perfectly functional now. Organized, clean and plenty of room for two cars, bikes and scooters for 9 people and all of our miscellaneous crap.

And the best part? In all of this dumping, cleaning, purging and organizing I found the most beloved thing I had lost for the last 8 years: my tape of Teegan’s birth!!!!!!!!!! THIS is why you can’t just dump out an entire garage of shit just because you haven’t used it in a few years. It is more painful to go through it all piece by piece and it is REALLY painful if you are prone to attachments to random crap (thankfully Tony and I are not attached to much anymore). Noah was better than expected and Addison only had fits when she discovered all her baby toys on the way to goodwill. We did good!

And hence you think this is ALL we did during the previous 3 days, this actually only took us 3 hours start to finish (not including Goodwill trips). Here’s our completed task list for the 3 day weekend:

Clean off stairs and fully clean livingroom
clean guinea pig cage
take random crap to attic
switch computer desks with Tony (now I get the good view of the house AND the yard outside!!)
get wrapping paper bins for under our bed.
finish sorting through 6 book boxes from garage
oil change/car wash for prius
mount / connect wifi camera (now I can see, hear and talk to whoever is at my front door through my computer! Eeek!)
fix stripped screws in playstands
clean off kitchen table / hall table
clean off top of desks/armoires
3 loads of laundry
sort through Addy’s outgrown clothes in preparation to sell them (ouch. it hurts.)
work on playhouse (glue down molding, buy,cut and nail up window trim)
trip to petstore for timothy hay and guinea pig supplies
take down and store Valentines decorations
Get Spring / Easter decorations from garage
major master bedroom/craft/closet decluttering
buy beanbag for playhouse reading corner
buy new hand towels for 2 bathrooms
shop for Noah’s birthday
box and ship any book sales (several!!)
groom Lilo

Whew!!!!!!!!!!!!! We even managed to go to the park as a family - twice. And go out for ice cream as a family once. I also found time to do a bit of work online as well as research hedgehogs as pets (any opinions?) and contact a few breeders. I read a few more “beads” of Eat, Pray, Love which I am LOVING. So it wasn’t all workworkwork.

Here’s my goal list for the next week:

Paint dining room wall brick red (!!)
purge and reoganize kids bathroom/linen closet
clean family room (where all the crap we brought in from the garage currently sits)
research power sprayer/washer for my walkway
figure out how to get my outdoor patio cushions free of algae/green stuff (ANY IDEAS?!?!)
finish painting playhouse roof and look for roof paper, christmas tree lights and small bookshelf for playhouse
measure, buy,cut and nail up last bits of trim for the playhouse
order Easter baskets
replace hammock

The big job coming up for me will be the gameroom reorganization. I can’t even tell you what a huge job this is. It is right up there with the garage. There WILL be before and after pics. But I am doing this next weekend at the latest. I hope we get lots of rain this week - that will motivate me since this beautiful weather will be hard to resist otherwise. The other big job is going through and listing for sale Addy’s clothes. I find the whole process so tedious but she has some really nice clothes and I’d like to recoop some of the cash I spent on them.

My dear friend Kelly inspired me to start creating some weekly goals. I few weeks ago I made a very (very) lengthy list of things we need to get done around the house, all organized and assigned urgency values. Since then I have done NOT ONE THING on that list. Originally I thought a list like that might help motivate me. I noticed I had felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things I wanted to get done and at any given time when I had the time and motivation to get stuff done I’d just sort of spin around, throw my hands up and sit back down at the computer to distract myself from how overwhelming it all felt. The list was meant to change all that. It didn’t work. All it did was put on paper how overwhelmed I felt. Finding the motivation to dive in and tackle just one thing wasn’t happening.

I really like Kelly’s simple lists. One of the things I love most about them is that she has balanced her goals across many areas. They aren’t a list of drudge work that needs to get done (although that’s certainly been on her list, too!). She takes care to take care of herself and her spiritual and emotional needs, too.

So taking a page from her book, I’m posting my goals. I’m trying to keep them simple and do-able and I’ve targeted a few areas of importance to me in my life so I don’t feel like my life is All About Cleaning. Don’t get me wrong - there’s more to my life than this list but this list contains the things I frequently let go and ignore and put off and feel frustrated with myself for not attending to by the end of the day. So on top of my normal everyday routine and responsibilities, I’ll be aiming for these things as well.  If I can follow these daily goals, I am pretty sure I’ll feel damn proud of myself at the end of the day. Heck, even if I can follow half of these goals, I’ll feel better! I won’t bore you all with my daily lists but I’ll post my first day so you can see what sort of format I’m hoping to follow.

One of the most important parts of this new goal is to stay off the computer when I’m not supposed to be on the computer. I can get so lost for so long online and do absolutely nothing.  Often I can combine Really Important Work with nothing and stretch it out so I can justify why I’m spending so much time online. But seriously, it needs to stop. I’m not taking the Internet out of my life but I’m putting her in Time Out until I’ve earned it. Ok, so she will still be my morning cup o’ Joe. But the minute my husband steps out the door to work, I go to work too (and not the online variety, this time). I know this will be the hardest part for me, sad to say. Once I Shut Her Off, the rest should be fairly easy. So wish me well.

Monday’s Goals:

Organized Homeschool: Put up world map in gameroom

Clean & Declutter: Sort laundry in bedroom, pick up livingroom, sweep tile

Organize: Scrapbooking paper

Craft: Make one scrapbooking page

Pets:

Diet: exercise DVD and DRINK WATER

Cooking: Make cookies, Work on dinner (this is usually something Tony does in full so if it seems odd that its on my list, that’s why)

For Kids: Pick up Gameroom floor around desk (aka paper collection point)

Personal: Guided Meditation

Errands: Noah to Gymnastics

Computer: Work on VVAI article