Cleaning Schedule

Habitual impracticality, the practice of being impractical is truly an area that I do excell in. However each impractical idea becomes more attainable as I learn and grow and become less impractical in my impracticality. Meaning I am still impractical but not as much as I was a year ago.

For example last year I was able to lose 25 lbs and start exercising. The exercising has fallen to the wayside and though I never ran the marathon I was dreaming of running I did run a 5k and have kept the weight off.

This year it's cleaning. I downloaded an app called homeroutines and have it set up now to fit my needs. It is quite a handy little tool and I should be able to get my house deep cleaned and organized with this little tool.

So I have decided this should be my next impractical idea! Hopefully it will turn into practical and a habit but at the very least it may just help me improve my skills at keeping up on things.

Familiar Pain

Running is therapeutic. A stress reliever. So when I started feeling familiar pangs of insecurity I ran. Turned on an Elisabeth Elliot teaching and ran until my head was clear.

Afterwards I felt another familiar pain. The Beginnings of shin splints. Blast these muscles and their weaknesses. How am I to run away one familiar pain when it causes another?

Wow!!!

Push. Run. Breathe. Focus. Posture. You can do it! These are the things running through my head as I push harder and harder. Running faster than I expected to be able to. I'm no olympian, nor am I at all able to even win a race or anything. But for me personally, this is great!

My last few runs I have been able to push and run faster than I expected. Not for very long until today. Today I ran for 5.9 mph for over four minutes!!! It felt SO good!

On the other hand, I have had a horrible sinus headache that has lingered for two days. Deep congestion due to either seasonal allergies (which I doubt as the cold froze everything recently) or the smoke from all of the fireplaces running. I can smell it when my heater is running. Killing me.

But I run. I run to try to create a natural decongestant. I run because I have gained weight due to my period. I run because it makes me handle life better. I run because I am addicted. I run because I love it.

So I run.

Theraputic Sweating

Yesterday was a long somewhat emotional day. We had a funeral for a precious women who passed away last week. I had not cried yet until I saw the family and started to realize how much they are hurting. They are all doing very well but it is still a very painful time for them.

I didn't get home until about 10:30 and I knew that if I didn't run I wouldn't be able to again until Thursday. Unfortunately I had not been able to run since last Thursday so I didn't want to wait too long.

I ran, sweated, ran, sweated, and by the end I no longer had a crying headache, no longer did I feel emotionally exhausted. In fact, I felt a nice normal "it's late" tired. Running really did help me through what is normally a miserable after effect. Praise God! I doubt it would have been so effectual if she were my own grandmother, but I am sure there is still some therapy to sweating through the difficult times of life. Praise God for treadmills.

Back In The Game

Run run run as fast as you can or else the person on second will pass you by. Played baseball Sunday. It was fantastic. Monday morning I was so sore I could barely move!

Rerun

"Why won't some people ever change?!" I thought to myself frustrated. Speaking with Kelly about it later she said "what happened that made you frustrated with this person?" my answer? Absolutely nothing. But the past few weeks I had become increasingly annoyed with the little things.

So what had changed? It was the running. When running I was less tense, more happy, I dealt better with issues and had more energy. But the leg injury had stopped all of that.

Getting a treadmill to my house and making the realization of how much I had changed since I had stopped running both occurred around the same time and so I started up again. Now, four days later, I can feel the renewed energy and can laugh off a few more things. Praise God!!!

Next week I plan to be a little less aggressive and run every other day instead of every day. I am back. Try and catch me!

Minimum Maintenance

I love M&M's. They are such a simple candy. If you think about it they are really just chocolate drips in a hard shell package. Its the same amount of chocolate that, when baking, you drip on the counter when you move the spoon you used to stir the chocolate from the bowl to your mouth.

Growing up we hated cleaning and so my mom always tried to come up with ways to make it easier and more fun. One thing we did was MM, or Minimum Maintenance. We would spend 5 minutes in each room, clean as much as possible, and move on to the next room. We used a timer. We raced. We laughed. It was over quickly.

I am going to go back to this today. My house has been fairly organized lately and today I need to simply do a quick pick up and sweep. I wonder if it will still be as fun without my mom or brother here to help. Perhaps I should invite mom over?

We also used to gamble with M&M's when we played canasta.

I am Back!

Week of 52, Day of 6Days to next Tea , Days to next dinner

I am back and I am raring to go! Above you see my typical format from previous challenges. I love the title that I picked for this blog because it describes me perfectly! The reason I have left the above format is because I, once again, as is my habit, want to tackle the impractical. I want to try this again. Perhaps, just perhaps, I can accomplish the impossible. The reason I have not filled in the gaps above is because I am not totally convinced that I want to tack the same old impractical. Why not come up with something new and impractical? What a great idea!

So this is me, coming back to the world of blogging. Letting the writer in me giggle as I tickle its fancy, and the fanciful in me to stretch and yawn and say, "its about time!"

Another Good Giveaway!

Another really cool giveaway, this one is for a free Wii and Wii Fit, a Drill set or a drill.
I SO want to win this because not only would I love to have a Wii, I really will need a drill now that I own my first place SOOOoooo I would love to win any of the 3 prizes! I actually NEED the drill stuff more than I need the Wii, but with my new house the Wii would be SO COOL! I am excited!!!

Click Here

Another Giveawa

I don't blog about many giveaways so you know this is a cool one:

http://amomsimpression.com/2010/02/06/evolve-showerheads-giveaway/#comment-5425

This is for a showerhead that is eco friendly and COOL!

Moving Plans

Week 19 of 52, Day 6 of 6

SOOOOoooo everything has changed. I got the house that I put an offer on so I am no longer on an organization schedule and am not inviting anyone over yet. Currently my goal is to pack 1 area a day. I may still pack on Sundays because it really doesn't seem like work, its a lot of fun! I am VERY excited about this new place and organizing should be SO much easier as I will have 5 closets in the entire house plus the garage, plus the attic. In my current house...2 closets. Thats it.

So, I will keep you posted!

Week of 52, Day 2 of 6
Days to next Tea TBA, Days to next dinner 19

SOOOoooo February is going to be focused on kitchen, due to that fact I am going to start reading all the kitchen areas of the magazine that I got.

As for cleaning, tonight I will pick up the bathroom. I am, once again, exhausted so I need a small space to work on. Hopefully by Thursday I will find some energy somewhere in this house.

As for now, I am going to get ready for bed and clean while I am doing that.

Oh, quick tip, I had all my eyeliners and mascara that I needed somewhere to put it so I grabbed a tumbler from the kitchen and threw them in that and put it inside my bathroom mirror cabinet. I believe it will work out nicely!

Get It While Its Out

Week 18 of 52, Day 1 of 6
Days to next Tea TBA, Days to next dinner possibly 20

My cousin showed me a fabulous resource that I had to pass on to you. It is a Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publication, which basically means its a magazine that is only printed once. It is called Storage and you can find it at most places that carry magazines. It is amazingly stocked full of ideas that are not only friendly on your wallet but easy to tackle! For example, they have a 1 year plan of organizing your entire house! We are starting late so January will take a little catch up, but thats ok. Each month tackles a different area, (i.e. January is the office) and each area has 4 projects that can be accomplished 1 each week, a few at a time, or whatever you are most comfortable with!


Now, after all that excitement I, personally, am going to skip January since its too late to really get it done right, and save it for a month that doesn't apply to me (like kids rooms). But for those of you wanting to start now then work on your office in these 4 areas:

Gather all slips of paper with passwords and put them in one notebook, then get rid of all those slips of papers.

Create a vertical paper-storage system using wall-mount file holders. This is for things like bills that you would need to see and access easily.

Create a horizontal filing system for long term paper storage. You can use a filing cabinet or get a cute file holder. Either way, make sure you have hanging folders and tabs to keep it organized and easily accessible. Now is a good time as well (since you are going through them anyway) to begin a file of your tax paperwork. Anything you think you will need for your taxes this year get in one spot and label it "Taxes 2009."

Keep only one current month of your favorite magazines. If old issues have important articles, clip them and store in a binder or file folder. (This one is going to be hard for me!!!)

So there you go. There is a fabulous resource for you to try as well as a preview of whats inside it! You may want to grab the magazine yourself as I am going to try to remember to do this every month but I may forget.

Tonight I am trying to get back on schedule. I am switching from doing laundry on Thursdays and Fridays to a little every night as needed. For example, right now I have a vacation's worth of laundry to do so I did one load last night, I will do one tonight and I will keep doing that until I am caught up. Then I will start washing sheets and rugs and such as they are all ready to be washed again.

Tonight's pick up is going to be in the dining room. It is pretty clean and I am tired so thats an easy one. Tomorrow I will work on the Living Room. Some other day I will hit my bedroom which seems to never stay nice anymore.

Goodnight!

Coming Home Soon

So I haven't been keeping track of what week I am on, but I will figure that out when I get home. When I do get home my first goal is to continue maintaining what is done and then slowly build back up to where I was before Christmas hit.

I have been recouping and refreshing on this vacation and I am feeling very relaxed finally. Tomorrow is my last day and I plan on spending the morning on a date with Jesus. I haven't had a whole lot of just quiet reflective time since I arrived so I think this will be a nice way to spend the first part of my last day. After that my sister-in-law comes home and I will have some time with her and then Sunday we go home. I can't believe its already over. But I am looking forward to being home again.

As a quick side note, some of you know I have gotten into these giveaways on blogs and one of them that I just stumbled across tonight is for a new faucet! Amazing! I am excited because I am house hunting and if I win I could totally use this in my new house!!! So click here if you are interested and maybe look around, you might find some more similar giveaways and get addicted as well!!!

A Recipe For Goodness

One of my favorite spices is Lemon Pepper because it is so versatile. You can use it for so many different quick easy recipes. Here is one of my most often used last minute meals:

Some sort of Poultry, whole bird or pieces
Lemon Pepper
Garlic Salt
Olive Oil

Cover the poultry with all of this and cook until finished. It is fabulous!!!

Organization Helps

We can always use ideas and helps on organizing. Plus reading about ideas help us to stay motivated and feel like we can actually accomplish some of the ideas. So on that note I wanted to pass on this website I found on Better Homes and Gardens about Organization. They have tips and tricks and lots of ideas to help you clear the clutter and get on the road to a better organized household.

Giveaways

So I'm on vacation and now I am entering a bunch of giveaways. It is loads of fun! One giveaway that I thought I would share is a posturepedic bed giveaway!

http://mommymandy.com/sealy-posturepedic-signature-series-giveaway/
http://www.sealy.com/

enjoy!

Perhaps I am Human After All

Week 16 of 52, Day 1 of 6
Days Until Vacation: 4!!!

I have resorted to dry erase marker on the bathroom mirror. I know, I know, but you cannot imagine the menagerie of things that are running through my head all day long that I want to get done before I leave. It is quite overwhelming. The most frustrating part is that the mirror is not with me 24/7. I really need a portable mirror to write my notes on.

Tonight I am going to work on taking Christmas down. I really want to come back to a neat organized house and my goal is to get Christmas down tonight, deep cleaning tomorrow, work on my car on Wednesday and Thursday I will do laundry and pack.

As for the title of this post, I am finally feeling human again after being sick for over a week. Today was the first day that I did not actually feel sick at all. I am tired because I haven't slept much, and my nose still runs like it's in a marathon, but I feel great! I am ready to tackle the Christmas decor! See you tomorrow!

Ick

If you have ever had a fish tank you know what ick is. It is SO hard to get rid of. I think thats what I have only because its never going away.

Ugh.

I mean Ick.

Toolbox Tuesday

Week 15 of 52, Day 2 of 6


Something that works great for me, and this is no joke, Lotion Tissues. Seriously. When you are sick this is like the best thing for your poor little overblown nose. Regular Tissues have left me refusing to blow my nose because it hurts so bad, I get raw skin and I cry. Lotion Tissues are like a healing balm even when you switch at the end. But man if you start with them!!! They are amazing!!!

Imagine a chenille blanket for your nose.

Normally my toolbox stuff will have to do with organizing but as I am still sick, I am writing about whatever makes me happy right now. And right now, thats lotion tissues!!!