so i broke one of my rules - well not a rule but suggestions.  do it one room at a time, which i didn't.  even my hubby pointed this out to me.  good to know he is reading my blog  LOL 

anyhow - this weekend i jumped to the little man's room instead of finishing the kitchen.  what i have to complete in the kitchen is the pantry, under the sink, the fridge and counters.

but i thought since it was the weekend and i had longer stretch of time i would change the baby room into a little boy's room.  i have to sew some curtains and a new blanket because as you can see the curtains are still pooh and there is a montreal canadiens comforter but it is mostly a blue toy story room.

~ simply me ~

some kitchen cupboard before and afters

the kitchen cupboards

the endless amount of tupperware

pots and pans and yes - more tupperware

pots and pans - got rid of the set from university finally

~ simply  me ~

days one and two .. i am tired already

well, the decluttering project is under way.  day one and day two of the actual work and not just the list making i tackled the downstairs bathroom, the mudroom and the cupboards in the kitchen. the bathroom was fairly easy, but as you can see it has some cosmetic work to be done.  tom and i renovated this bathroom - oh let's say 5 years ago now and it still isn't complete.  we aren't very good at the completing of tasks.  we always have great ideas and visions of things and start them but they rarely get finished. from here on out we either complete them in their entirety or have someone else do the work for us (probably the better option).  tom is a good demolition man but if he can't drive a sledgehammer through it or burn it in the campfire once it is ripped apart, the job has come to an end :)

since i finished working on the bathroom rather quickly i started the mudroom.  first step was the closet.  since both tom and i have lost a fair amount of weight it was pretty easy to go through all the jackets and get rid of them because most of them didn't fit anymore.  above the jackets i threw away almost everything because i haven't looked up there probably since we moved into the house 10 years ago.  things just get put up there after being used or when we are cleaning the yard for winter.  that would explain the 6 bottles of kid bubbles.  and at the back there was a box with led crystal candle sticks, candles and a c.d. which I am pretty sure never belonged to us. I think it may  have belonged to the people who lived in the house before us.  but bad me, i put the led crystal candle sticks on the hutch cause they are nice - but really?  maybe I should send them off in one of my second hand store bags.

day two of the project i took care of the shoe cubbies and what i call the pail - which you can't even see beneath the window-frame mirror for all the clutter.  the pail is where seasonal things get thrown.  in the winter it is full of hats, gloves and scarves.  come summer it is usually flip flops, plastic shovels, bugspray and suntan lotion.  and where is the pail now? you ask. well, guilty, i put it in the closet but in my own defense it is really old and i am pretty sure my mom will want it instead of me throwing it away

in the back of the shoe cubbies i found a fish filleting knife that my father in law bought for tom about 6 years ago.  it was still in its original package.  when i asked him if he wanted it first he said no, then he said yes and to put it with the fishing gear - so for now it sits in the basement with the fishing gear but the basement will be touched with my "cleaning with vengeance" soon enough.  what also sits in the basement are tom's rollerblades that i found in the back of the top cubby.  those two were originally a no to keeping but he quickly changed his mind to a yes.  those will be revisited too

after lunch today (day two) gavin asked if we could do some more on the list.  he is having a ball doing this.  while cleaning out the shoe cubbies he and his brother both wore their sandals and bike helmets that we found in there.  

and so, we put the little man down for his afternoon nap and gavin and i started to take everything out of the cupboards in the kitchen.  so what i thought was going to be a relatively short project took almost 8 hours.  and because of that i have to leave this post as it is.  my body is achy, and i need to get to bed.  tomorrow i will upload the before and after pictures from the tupperware cupboard (or plural), the glasses, the plates, the sippy cups and so forth.

good night, until tomorrow

~ simply (tired and worn out) me ~

list, upon list, upon list, upon list

the master list - so i have 12 bags in 12 days instead of 40 but i am thinking it may be 40 bags over 24 days.  i am giving myself 2 days for each room and i am thinking i am going to need way more than one bag per room lol

i have this posted on my pantry door so i can see it all the time.  i have included the lists for the top 8 decluttering tasks.  number 9 is so overwhelming i don't even want to think of it and the garage, shed and yard can't really be done until the snow melts which will hopefully be soon.

enjoy the lists.  as you can see i had some help writing some of them out.  also on these lists i put items that i want to clean and or repair/fix in each room because we have a lot of little things to do to our house. i have posted each poster in the room it goes with.

seems kind of daunting but at least i have it all out in front of my now and know what needs to be done.  and i need to think of the outcome - less stuff, less to take care of, less to clean up, more time to do the things i want to

"the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." hans hofmann

- simply me -

declutter (a verb) - to simplify or get rid of mess, disorder, complications, ex: declutter your life

scanning through the lists of the top 10, top 60 and the 200 ways to simplify your life there is a common thread to pretty much every point which is decluttering or some aspect of it as per the definition above.  

get rid of the complicated things in life - simplify ways of doing things like household chores, daily routines, workplace requirements.  eliminate the disorder and rid your life, house, car, desktop, electronic device of mess, get rid of the disorder in your finances by creating a budge to follow

i have always loved this poster but there does come a time when the mess is a little too much - or that is how i have felt lately.  probably because when you suffer from any sort of depression you tend not to have ambition to do much of anything; especially household chores. i grew up in a house that was lived in, but it was clean, organized and tidy but it wasn't a house where you weren't allowed in rooms because they were the "formal" dining room or the "formal" living room.  they were rooms in our house - some used more than others but definitely rooms anyone could go in.

so i am going to start on decluttering my house.  last week i thought i would start with something simple - the front of the fridge.  yes i removed some of the kindergarten art projects, the business cards of people i have never called but seem to hang on to the card because some day when i may need the peterborough examiner salesperson i will have his number at hand, the year old magnet that reminds me to take my son to the dentist and so forth.  i have removed everything except some of magnets and the leap frog letters.  

~wow~ my fridge is so clean and that corner of the kitchen looks huge. i am actually thinking as i write this that i should get rid of all those magnets so i am not tempted to keep any more crap on there. 

i forgot to do the before and after picture but i will definitely start to do that from here on out in my decluttering process.

have you ever been to a solutions store?  click on the logo below and check this place out.  if anyone ever wants to get me something get me a gift certificate to this place.  

click here

i was in there on boxing day and was in heaven.  those of you who know me really well and have been to my house will know that these completely decluttered, organized shelves, closets and stuff are non-existent in my house and may seem odd to you that i want a house like this - the organization but more importantly the lack of "stuff".  

on one of the living a simple life websites i visit regularly i came across a post by a girl names stephanie that i had to share

"Present Me is tired of holding onto Future Me’s crap. Future Me will just have to deal with it."    *love it, going to live by it

~~ the plan ~~

so, how am i going to do this huge task?  i have a plan that i am going to put in place.  it is a culmination of ideas and suggestions i have read that i have adapted for me

step one - write it all down so i have something to work by.  i am going to use this idea i read about called 40 bags in 40 days where each day you tackle another project on your list of things to do and have a large garbage bag for each project.  obviously if you have more than 40 things to do you are going to have more than 40 bags.  this is probably the step too where you need to decide if your house needs to be on an episode of hoarders 

     *once i get my list written out i will upload a picture

step two - take a before picture of the space

step three - start at the door of the room and work in a clockwise direction through the room so you don't keep going from spot to spot.  don't rearrange where things are put, remember you are going to get rid of things here.  you are going to throw them out or donate them.  when looking at items ask these questions

have a throw out pile (essentially one of your 40 bags), a donation pile and a keep pile

print out this poster a few times and put it up around the room you are working in

if you need have a friend you trust help you with the process, they can put a little perspective on the items and help you decide if you really need to keep it - especially if you have a friend who is a minimalist.  i have someone in mind who i might be enlisting to help me if she doesn't mind :)

step four - clean the surfaces and vacuum as you go because then you have both a clean and decluttered area.  move the furniture around in that room now that you have more room if you feel like it

step five - take the garbage to the dump or where you put your weekly garbage bags.  take the donations directly to where you are going to donate them.  and donate your stuff don't plan to have a garage sale because you are going to just put it somewhere else in your house to wait for the day you plan to have a garage sale.  also, don't think you are going to sell it on ebay or kijiji because again, you are going to put it somewhere else until you have the time to go upload it to the site, wait for interest, negotiate and all this time store it somewhere until it sells.  just take it away while you are doing the task. 

step six - take an after picture

step seven - compare the two pictures, feel the satisfaction of what you have accomplished

step eight - come tell me about what you did or email me pictures of your accomplishment.  post it on facebook or email it to friends to brag :)

and so it begins ....
i will keep you posted ....

~ simply me ~

simple journeys that are beyond satisfying

when i was growing up life was simple.  maybe that was because i was a kid and had little worries in the world.  i had two wonderful people taking care of the difficult things in life for me.  money, shelter, food, employment, world politics all were the furthest things from my life.  as parents that is what we do.  we create a life for our children to grow, to develop to become the people that they are.  and ....  i am starting to think it is my parents that really instilled in me the importance of simplicity but it has taken me a while to see it

i do know that at some point in my childhood i realized that my parents were raising me slightly different than those in the world around me.  my parents worked really hard to give my brother and i the things in life we had.  we lived in a really great neighbourhood, went to great schools and had amazing opportunities like extracurricular activities and such but          more importantly we had great holidays and family time all that were pretty simple.

sure, every few years we went on a big family trip to places like florida, california, british columbia, alberta and in my late teen years parts of europe when my dad was working in czechoslovakia.  whenever we went on a trip my mom would buy my brother and i a journal to keep; to write about our trip.  we collected post cards and brochure from the places we went to and every  night wrote about where and what we had done that day.  i am so thankful for that because still to this day i have those journals and those memories.  


but more important than these big trips were the small ones - every year we went somewhere or explored some new places in ontario - even if it was a day trip.  it was exciting to hop in the car and head off somewhere we haven't been before or even to a place we went regularly like the forks of the credit, bellfountain and flapjacks for dinner - i doubt many people know where that even is.  look at that picture - did you even know that existed in ontario?  or we would go apple picking on that little orchard on leslie south of stouffville side road.  to go to the nation's capital, or the big nickel, or leemington (home of heintz ketchup), or the twelve o'clock lodge, going for a drive to picton and trying to find a friend's farm house and even the road trip with my aunt and cousins to find mines of gold and silver in the land of the silver birch, home of the beaver...


oddly enough, and i think i can talk for my brother too - one of our favorite things was going for a saturday night into downtown toronto.  even into my teens (when parents aren't supposed to be cool or you didn't want to hang out with them) we went as a family into toronto - and my brother and i would ask to go.  the night started with a drive into the city, dinner at licks that was on the second floor of a building where you looked down the exciting lights of downtown toronto - the sam the record man spinning records (maybe that is why i worked at sams for almost 10 years off and on), a&a records, honest eds.  then we were on to the world's biggest bookstore which is literally that - two storeys of books that used to be a bowling alley.  we were allowed to pick out one or two new books that my parents would buy for us.  then on the way home we would beg to listen to the golden oldies on ckfm with don daynard while we drove up yonge street gazing out the car window and the busy streets, flashing lights and as we got closer and closer to thornhill the darkness of the once upon a time outskirts of the city.  rockin robin, runaround sue, crimson and clover, smoke gets in your eyes, jailhouse rock, hey jude - songs of yet an even more simpler time before computers, ipods, cdplayers, microwaves, cell phones .......


fast forward to life today. we still do this as adults both my brother and i.  my brother and his family just moved to victoria last week - he has been stationed at cfb esquimalt.  when we were saying goodbye in his driveway in north bay he remembered something that he had to give me before he left.  he passed along his backroads of ontario books to me.  he tells me that he included some notes in the books on places they have been to.  i see that our childhood has rubbed off on us both.  we have rubbed off on our spouses as well because they too like to just hop in a car for a road trip.  or they just put up with our quirkiness :)

so i look back on the things in life that i love to do and that mean the most to me and it includes that aspect of adventure, exploration and being in the outdoors.  both my brother and i love it - and to write and read (gee i wonder where all that came from) i used go on driving adventures with my best friends growing up once we had our driver's licenses. our parents would probably have killed us to know the places we went in their vehicles instead of going to the movies or out with friends for dinner.  we found a weird neighbourhood with a house adorned with an upside down star of david, and huge mansions in the middle of no where north of where we lived.  we even skipped school one day so we could go on a day trip in grade 12 (so mom and dad if you are reading this, it is all your fault for teaching and instilling in me that sense of adventure and exploration)

to jump in the car and go somewhere i have never been fulfills me, even if i don't find anything.  it is so easy to do too - you don't have to go far.  just drive down a road you have never been down before.  i have done that - for years i have passed mossy stonecrop road on highway 11 north of washago. so coming home from my ob appointment one day - 8 months pregnant at that - i turned down it; granted it was pretty lackluster, not one mossy stonecrop did i see, nor did it go much further than a kilometre but i have now been down that road and next time maybe i will try a different one.  

so i challenge you to hop in the car and drive aimlessly down roads you have never been.  take a different way home.  pack a lunch and the kids or your spouse or a friend and pick a town on the ontario map that jumps off the page at you and go for it.  stop at a waterfall or rock cut you pass every day.  and if on the way the kids say are we there yet?  say yes and get out to take a look around - after all you don't have a destination on an adventure ....

- simply me -