Busy as a Bee

Being away from home with not a lot to do can certainly renew one's desire to get her act together. It also helps to not have easy access to a computer :)

I don't know if I was just feeling the pregnancy more or just really had a lack of drive, but the last 5 months I have been dragging behind in my duties. I have done more in the past few days than I did for weeks prior to our trip away. I did some thinking on that loooooong trip, and decided that even if I don't really just love the house I live in, I need to make the best of it because it is a blessing. It's huge and soundly built and free.

The first thing is to get rid of the things bothering me- namely extra stuff. Seems like there's always stuff in every corner! So far I've gone through all the girls' clothes and some toys, cleared out our laundry room, and rounded up as much 'trash' as possible. The next thing is my closet, the kitchen, and really working on the toys. Saturday we are switching our living room to the front room again, while the playroom/office goes to the room with the fireplace. I am tired of the mess being the first thing you see when you walk in the door.

My husband agreed to help me make our bedroom nice. We haven't had a nice room since we got married! This will include painting, probably, as well as locating a larger dresser and hopefully a headboard. Plus we need bedding that actually fits and curtains. Also I want to brighten up the living room and kitchen, either by painting the paneling or just using bright colors. Then there is our baby's room to get together- can you believe I haven't bought anything or made anything for this baby yet? I don't even have the stuff I used with the other three anymore! I'm getting anxious about that...

Then there is the outside. It really needs some sprucing up with plants or something. It is last on the list though :) So, the last two days I did all the laundry (wow for me), totally deculttered and organized the laundry room, unpacked everything, cleaned out the girls' closet and have two bags for Goodwill and one for my neice, decluttered my bathroom and actually found my rug and toilet lid cover, cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed, grocery shopped, created my new home management system that I'll talk about later, and stuck to my routines fairly well. The past two nights I haven't slept well, so today I put off any decluttering and declared a food prep day instead.

I had to run back to the store for some forgotten items, then I made some kefir, started a kombucha brew, started some crockpot yogurt and made part of dinner. I made lunch and have a huge bag of ripe bananas to work with that I got for $1! I may be able to wait a few days before I have to do something with them, which is good because I forgot to buy more flour! Next I need to finish the kombucha, finish dinner and possibly make another one for tomorrow, and my most hated task of ALL, clean the fridge out!!!!

Before you think I'm superwoman, let me tell you, my car is filthy from our trip. Our ice chest is still sitting in the kitchen full of water and floating water bottles. I have a pile of mail to sort through on my kitchen counter and my sewing room is littered with tons of thread and scraps of material all on the floor. Plus the girls' room is a mess. Oh yeah, the refrigerator has food in it from before our trip...fun.

But, if I don't get it today I'll do it Friday, because tomorrow is a fun day for us- visiting my mom and doing some shopping. I hope to get some sewing in this week too, but that would be a bonus :)

I guess after seeing how well managed my cousin's family was, with the 9 kids and her being pregnant, I figured I could handle my own a lot better than I was. She does get stressed out and really enjoyed being able to vent to me, but she has a great positive outlook on it all. I am certain we would help each other, but I guess we'll have to resort to snail mail...what's that??


Alright, time to get littles to naps and finish what I started.