Decluttering – Page 5 – a hippie with a minivan

clutter…clutter… clutter…

I was looking back at old posts this morning and realized that there is a pattern of me needed and wanting to declutter in November. Seriously, blogging is a great way to see what was happening in previous years.

Yesterday I put Wilhelmina on my back and attacked the cupboard above the fridge. It attacked me back and I have the bandages toe to prove it. It still seems full but I got rid of a half of a garbage bag worth of stuff. I still can’t fathom how that all fit in there! The more I declutter the more I realize how much I have (or had) a problem with keeping things. I was always thinking “maybe I’ll need this one day” and it would just sit there for years. My mom had the same issue when I was younger, there were times that we didn’t have much so she kept a lot of things ‘just in case”. The house was always clean, but there was clutter.

It is hard cycle to break but it feels so good now to get rid of things. It feels so good to have space to put things, to see what I have instead of forgetting about things. It feels good to be able to clean up the main living space easily and quickly. It feels great to know where things are and be able reach it without clutter getting in the way. It feels great to look at room and only see things that you like, and need and use. It is that feeling that drives me now. When I look at the things that I was keeping “just in case” I am starting to see it as what is preventing me to be happy in my home. I see it as garbage and well, clutter.

I would like for us to sell our house and move closer to Montreal. Even if that means renting again. I can’t fathom doing so with so much clutter in our lives. I was to simplify, I was to make things easier, I want have less things to think about if we were to move.

I also want to break the cycle with my kids. Xavier has a lot of problems letting go of things, I want to teach him that letting go is OK… yesterday, as I filled that garbage bag I was proud to see that Xavier came and looked at what I was doing, and accepted that the things in there and accepted that they would be leaving the house. He didn’t protest when he saw the old sandbox next to the curb, and was excited to see that it was gone about an hour later.

I try to do a bit every day, even if it is just a stack of papers or a kitchen utensil that I don’t use any more. We still have a lot to do, but our efforts are working and little by little the weight of having so much stuff around us is being lifted.

Marche dans le Marais…

Right after I wrote my post last week about being discouraged, I went for a walk in a marsh near my home which is also a bird sanctuary. It was a beautiful day, so I got the kids ready and headed out…

I received my new Ergo recently also so it was a perfect opportunity to put Wilhelmina on my back and have my hands and front free for the camera.

I am ashamed to say that I had never been there before, it is a 15 minute drive so I have no excuse, but I will be going back often I hope…

The walk itself is not long at all,and if I didn’t have the boys I would have done it twice at least, but going at their pace and taking tons of pics was really nice.

I saw so many birds but wasn’t able to capture them all… Since coming back from Annie’s I have a new interest in birds, I used to love watching birds but now I want to identify them and learn their calls… and what an amazing place to do so!

(Tree Swallow and Yellow Warblers)

(Great Blue Heron)

It was a lot of fun being out with the kids and just enjoying the walk…

Of course getting a bit of exercise was also great, but because I didn’t feel challenged at all by the walk, I headed out to the pool in the afternoon… I am starting to see a lot of opportunities to help me get fit this summer and a lot of places to discover…

Discouraged…

If you have been reading my blog for a while then you know that I have been struggling with my weight for a long time now… I have always been overweight and I have always felt insecure with the way I look.

Now, is not different.

About ten years ago I was at my highest weight and decided that I would lose it. I went to Weight Watchers and over the course of about 6 months lost 50 lbs. I was feeling great and feeling more confidant and more healthy…

I still had weight to lose but I was on the right track. Of course, life got in the way and I got pregnant, something that I really wanted but of course was not the best for my weight loss. Then came Colin, then Khéna and again I lost a bit of weight but was still about 20 lbs from where I had been before my first pregnancy. I was swimming, I was feeling great bit the summer hit, I went on vacation and fell out of the routine and the weight crept up again.

Now, 3 months after having Wilhelmina, I step on the scale and feel like weeping. I am right back were I started all those years ago.

The more you weigh the less energy you have and the harder it is to get up and get going, and with 4 kids, including a small nursing baby, the timing never seems right.

I need to do it though. I need to do it for myself. I need to do it for my family…

Wilhelmina is most likely our last baby. This time, I am saying to myself that when I lose weight, there will no longer be a pregnancy to throw me off.

So, I making the vow to myself and here publicly. I am going to be using a food journal again… though I won’t go back to weight watchers, the journal I did when I was on it, helped me a lot. It was also what I did last time I lost weight. I am also going to start walking more and go back to swimming again. Hopefully doing those things will help me get back on track and feeling better.

Getting things done…

About 35 weeks now and things are starting to get done…

Last week I got the diapers out and placed them in the bathroom, all ready for the new baby… Seeing the small sized bummis covers and prefolds makes thing seem so much more real… in a few weeks we will have a new baby here, in my arms wearing those diapers!

Two weeks ago I found a new dresser for the boys at the “Recyclo-Centre” (Local donation centre that resells things and provides jobs)… I thought it looked not bad amidst all the clutter of all the other dressers etc, and we were really needing more place for the boys clothes so I bought it for 40$…

When it got to the house last week I realized that I found a great piece of furniture made from solid cherry and made in Canada and is worth a lot more used than I paid. Though I already had a great dresser in my room for my clothes, I decided to trade and use it for myself, which actually turns out well because my old dresser had 9 equal sized drawers while the new one has 6 thin and 3 long which fits all of our needs better. It also means that I now have a mirror in my room which is another nice thing.

The mirror should be in the middle but that would have blocked the window, but I find that putting it to the side worked out great…

So this weekend we switched the dressers and then placed the boys clothes and my own… Placing the boys clothes in their new dresser also liberated the dresser for the baby and we brought that in my room, which fits better than I would have thought it would.

Now to get all the baby clothes out, cleaned (in the washer as I type) and placed in the drawers… again, something that will make it feel so much more real..

My mom also came over on Sunday and gave us a hand in the house. Cleaning the bathroom, dusting and cleaning a few of the walls, the floors etc… It helped us get the upstairs cleaned while we worked more downstairs…

Another big thing we did was to take down the vertical blinds in the living room (which I have always hated!) and put up curtains… I wish I would have done so a long time ago, the blinds were ugly, always looked dirty and didn’t work well… and I already had everything I needed, the rod, the curtains (though I had to fix them to fit), I just needed to do it.. (nesting is good for that).. the curtains transform the space completely and it makes this house feel just a bit more like a home…

My living room now makes me smile a bit more when I see it… It lightens the whole place up…

Slowly but surely things are getting done in preparation… I still have a bit to do but knowing that I now have clothes and diapers and the carseat is not too far out of reach, I feel a lot better now…

Today I also received my new potty bowl… ready to EC… and so much smaller than I though it would be!

My next big (little) detail is to find or buy a new adaptor for the hose to fill up the birthing pool… after I do that I will feel really ready to give birth and welcome the new little one.. it’s all coming together now…

Organization…

Last night I went to a parents meeting for the homeschooling group that is a bit farther away… the theme for the night was organization and for some that was more about homeschooling and how to organize time and priorities etc.. for others it was about other things like cleaning the house…

When we bought this place 5 years ago I thought it was big… I had only lived in apartments and small spaces before so in relation to what I was used to, it is big… but now our family is bigger and the space is definitely small and it is cluttered and it is just not working as well for our family as I would have hoped… If we could move one day, I hope it would be sooner than later but for now we just need to stay put and deal with it for a while more…

But going back to organization… a while back I had a great routine going for a bit, I would wake up, I would make breakfast and clean the kitchen, I would put things away and sweep and wash the floors and do a quick clean up of the bathroom etc and the house felt tidy and presentable with minimal work every day…I have a feeling that there are many people that do this with no problem but it took/takes a lot of effort for me to have that routine… then something happened and the routine went out the window and the house went back to being a mess and needing the weekend to clean up… I hate this though… I would love the weekend to be family time, not clean up time…

I hate cleaning, I have never been tidy, but I also know that I hate being in a messy house… and when things are tidy and clean it reflects on my mood and on my energy… it is like a vicious cycle and I see that I need to get back into that routine again…I need to start decluttering again so that we have less stuff and everything has a place. We are no where near that yet.

So please… tell me!

How do you do it? What is your routine? Where does your motivation come from? Do you care if housework is done or not? How do you deal with a smaller space where everything doesn’t have a place?

Give me your tips!