Decluttering – Page 7 – a hippie with a minivan

just a little change…

I am facing the fact that we won’t be moving in the near future… Where I want to go is just too expensive, jobs are scarce and things are just not timed very right with finances etc…

So if I can’t move, I need to make the most of what we have now.Which means in our homeschooling life and our home life…

We have been living in this house for almost 5 years now and sadly it still doesn’t feel like a home. So I have been thinking about what would help and I think that changing rooms around would help with the flow of the house.

We have a split level with 3 closed rooms on the basement level (office, guest room and large Playroom plus the laundry room) and 2 bedrooms upstairs (our rooms) with the living room and kitchen.

Right now the boys are in a room that is 10 X 11… with a very small closet (in their room are two overflowing dressers, a bunk bed and a toddler bed)… and our bedroom is slightly smaller though we have a larger closet…

My idea would be to have the boys room where the playroom is now which would have the advantage of having space for their bunkbeds, their dressers, a large closet and I would put the guest bed in there which would become Khéna’s bed… and there is alread some shelves up for books etc… and they would still have room for some toys if we decided to have it like that…

Our room would go in the office space downstairs which is the second largest room in the house so that we would be near the boys room and because the room is bigger, Simon could have his clothes in our room also (right now his clothes are in the guest room) and we would be on the same floor as the laundry.

The other advantage is that all of our daytime living space would be on the same floor… I would have my sewing room upstairs and easier to access, and because it wouldn’t double as the guest room we could put our other table in there which we could use for crafts, puzzles, games etc and it would give me extra room for cutting fabric etc…

I am still debating on whether to keep the office downstairs and have the playroom upstairs or vice-versa….

Anyway… those are my plans and I really want to do it and soon but it is hard to even imagine where to start. It would be a great oppurtunity though to declutter even more and do a deep clean of the house…

Has anyone done something like that? any tips on where to start?

TV free…

Well… the TV went off last week and the boys took it perfectly well…

I mean so perfectly they haven’t asked for it, they haven’t had the reflex of turning it on, they haven’t said a thing about it… it is like we never had it for them…

and they were completely addicted to that thing before…

It was really surprising…

There are still a few shows that I would like to continue watching so I download them… but there are not many and because I have to chose the shows that I would like to download I choose the ones that I really enjoy and it feels better for me knowing that I am watching something because I choose to watch it and not just because it is on…

I decluttered the playroom more last week and got two garbage bags worth of toys out of there and Simon cleaned it even more over the weekend and got our wooden trains back out and the boys are playing a lot more and that is really a good thing…

The saddest thing I find is how hard it was to actually do it… but I am so happy that we did…

eta: after reading this post… Simon called me to say that he saw Khéna turn on the TV as a reflex in the morning when he got up… of course it opens to a black screen though… he should lose that reflex soon though…

made a decision this morning…

Soon… we will have no more cable…

Though I watch a few shows…I more often use it at background noise in the evenings while on the computer.. however, the boys watch pretty much everyday… it isn’t really a struggle in general but I have to admit that since the boys interests are changing and they want to watch shows that I don’t like very much on channels with tons of commercials directed toward kids I have been feeling more uncomfortable about their watching habits…

We also have decided that we are buying a Wii for a family gift, so the money that we save in about 6 months will pay for that expense…

I do think that it will be weird not having TV, but I also think that it will be a good thing for the family… what I find scary though is realizing that it was a bit of a hard decision to make.. we are so used to having TV and having cable that even of we don’t really watch it, it has become such a habit that we keep paying for it….

So on Dec 4th we will be TV free…

I feel weird today…

The more healthy I eat, the less processed and more whole, the better I feel…

I am also quickly realizing that when I don’t eat well I feel it… something that didn’t happen as much even a year ago…

Yesterday… I didn’t eat well at all… it was delicious, I didn’t overeat, it was homemade and yummy… but it was greasy (both lunch and supper) and then followed by a bit too many snack size chocolates and today I have been experiencing the consequences…

Feeling this way kind of makes me happy in a weird way…

My diet has been improving more over the last years… and when I was not eating well on a regular basis, a day like yesterday would not have phased me or my body… as I am sure is the case with many others that do not eat well on a regular basis… and because it doesn’t make you feel “worse” then it is hard to change your habits…

but now, knowing that I don’t feel well after eating certain things makes me want to eat better.. not just because I know that it is good for me, but because my body says no also…and I want to avoid feeling like I did this morning…

That is a big step I believe…

Another decluttering phase…

The decluttering bug has hit me again…it happened at the same time last year so maybe it is just the time of the year?

Whatever it is, I have been decluttering around the house the last few days…

the first thing I wanted/needed to do was the sewing room… All the fabric that I use was piled on a chair next to my desk which not only made the room look cluttered and messy but the fabric was wrinkled and hard to find also…

So.. on Friday I went out in search of a bookcase… and I found one… I didn’t pay much because it was the floor model which was a bonus because then I didn’t have to assemble it either…

So on Saturday I placed all my fabric in it, got rid of some stuff that I won’t use and cleaned up my sewing table… I also fixed the little office chair that I was no longer using because it was not too comfortable and was burried under all of the fabric… and at the same time Simon decluttered his clothes which are in the sewing room also…

Yesterday when making the beets I also decided to declutter my pantry… Now that feels good also…

I still have a lot to do in the house but I hope to tackle at least one thing a day and get the house to a level that I feel comfortable with…

Annie will be proud 😉