Make Your Life Easier - Getting Rid Of Clutter

In my last post, I talked about how one of my main New Year's resolutions was to try and get rid of all the useless clutter in my life. It's amazing how quickly clutter can take over a household, but unfortunately, getting rid of it can seem like it's a never-ending task. You know how it is - you clean your house out in preparation for a garage sale, and two days after the Salvation Army has picked up your left overs, you already have a new pile of clutter building up in the corner of your closet. It's a vicious cycle.

Let me start by saying that the only way to really stop clutter in your house is to stop buying more stuff and recycle what you already own into new things that you need.

But now that I've said that, let's be real. While that's definitely something to strive for, if your house is anything like mine (with a kid who is constantly outgrowing things, a husband who likes gadgets, and well, let's be honest, I like to shop!), that's probably not going to happen any time soon. So the only other de-cluttering options around here are to organize it or get rid of it.

There are two web sites that I've found that have been providing me with the weapons I need to constantly battle the clutter in my house: FlyLady.net and ClutterDiet.com.

FlyLady.net is definitely worth a look. There is a lot of great information on the site itself, (although they will encourage you to join FlyLady, a daily email subscription, which is free). The main idea behind FlyLady is to break down the huge job of cleaning and de-cluttering your home into small, easy to do tasks so that eventually your home clutter is under control. There is a TON of useful information on the web site - and I mean A TON. In fact, so much so that's it's a bit overwhelming. In the third paragraph down on the first page of the site, there is a link to a section called Flying Lessons - and I highly recommend starting there. And truthfully, that may be all you need for some great, motivating ideas. However, if you want to dive deeper, head back to the main page and scroll down to the sections called "Reinforce Your Habits" and "What Kind of FlyBaby Are You?". I actually joined FlyLady to see if their emails would be useful, and although I liked the daily reminders to do things, the emails were so darn long (and very repetitive!) that I unsubscribed within a week. No need to move from household clutter to email clutter! But I still think this is a great resource to get you started on a living a clutter-free life.

Now onto ClutterDiet.com. Although joining ClutterDiet.com, a subscription service, is not free (it costs $14.95 per month for access to a team of professional organizers online), there is actually quite a bit of free information available on the site, and it's SO much easier to read and navigate than FlyLady. Even better than the actual ClutterDiet site is the blog of Lorie Marrero, a professional organizer and the creator of The ClutterDiet. Her blog is filled with useful tips for creating a clutterless life and best of all, it's totally free. Instead of subscribing to the site, I recommend subscribing to the RSS feed of the blog (at no charge, of course) - I have yet to read an idea that I didn't think was useful.

Now I'm off to de-clutter my kitchen junk drawer... happy spring cleaning!

The Start of Something New

Hello, my name is Stacy and I am a magazine junkie.

I've always loved magazines, but my true addiction started a little over three years ago when my son was born. I have been an avid reader all my life - the librarian in the town where I grew up used to call me "The Human Book Vacuum". I typically would read a book or two a week, and when I was on a vacation or at the beach, I could easily devour a book every couple of days. I'm one of those people who gets so absorbed in what I'm reading that I completely tune out the rest of the world (I can just imagine my husband rolling his eyes right now and nodding his head in frustrated agreement!).

However, once Rory was born (and as you all probably know by now, he's a force to be reckoned with!), I couldn't focus on ANYTHING longer than a few minutes at a time, let alone try and read a whole book. And so my passion for magazines began. Glossy pages with a variety of interesting and relevant topics, all that can be read in five minutes or less? The perfect mini-escape for a busy mom!

I don't know about you, but I am always finding little tidbits in magazines that I read and think, "Wow, this is great useful information - I bet it will come in handy one of these days!" and so I fold the page over, promising myself that I'll remember to come back to it someday. But even with the best of intentions, I now have several stacks of magazines saved up, all with at least one or two pages folded down, if not more!

One of my new year's resolutions this year was to try and rid myself of useless clutter. I've been attacking my house with gusto, gleefully getting rid of old clothes we don't wear anymore, clearing through boxes in the garage, throwing out of papers in the office, even going so far as to take four full bags of Rory's old baby clothes - organized by size and season, mind you! - to a consignment shop. However, when it came to my stacks of magazines, with all of their folded pages peaking out at me, I just couldn't make myself get rid of them. I mean, just think of all that USEFUL INFORMATION! So USEFUL! Just waiting to be USED!!!

And so I got an idea. What if I tore out all the folded pages and put them into categories - and then created a new section of my blog to showcase all this amazingly USEFUL INFORMATION? No more stacks of magazines cluttering the nooks and crannies of my family room! And maybe, just maybe, I could feel like all this USEFUL INFORMATION would actually be getting USED!

So, to make a LOOOONG story short, I have decided to start a new area of my blog called "The Filing Cabinet". This section will include snappy headings (thought of by yours truly over the past few nights during my latest bout of insomnia) such as Worth It Web Sites, Make Your Life Easier (Tips and Tricks), The Mindful Mama (Parenting Help), and Going Green Gracefully. My hope is to essentially put the majority of this USEFUL information to the test in my own life and then let you know how it goes. If nothing else, I'm sure it will provide some entertaining blogging material! And if you also happen to test out any of these ideas or tips, I'd love to hear if it ended up being useful to you. Because in case you haven't noticed, USEFULNESS is kind of a theme here...

Here's to the start of something new!

Newsletter 3.0 (Happy 3rd Birthday, Rory!)

Okay, so I’m a little late writing this (two weeks late, to be exact), but there was so much going on around the time of your birthday that, quite honestly, this is the first real chance I’ve had to catch my breath.

Inhale.
Exhale.
Ahhhh – that’s much better! Now let’s get down to business.

You, my friend, had what I will now always refer to as “The Endless Birthday.” It started on the Thursday before your actual birth date when you had a party at your preschool to celebrate your Hebrew birthday. Because apparently, since the Hebrew calendar is different than the standard calendar that we all use (because there is that little matter of B.C. and A.D. that understandably doesn’t figure into the Jewish way of thinking), your Hebrew birthday doesn’t always fall on the same day as what the rest of the world considers your birthday. So you, being the lucky little devil that you are, got TWO birthdays.

Your father and I went to your school to see you celebrate with all of your classmates and the Rabbi by wearing a birthday crown and eating a nice kosher birthday cake.



You loved the special attention and the fact that you got to lick honey off of a picture of the Hebrew alphabet to signify that learning Hebrew (which you officially get to start when you turn three) is a sweet privilege. And so the enormous intake of sugar began…



That night, your Grandma Judy and your Granny Dudley came into town and with them came loads of fun, and of course, more sugar. By the time your birthday party on Sunday began, I don’t think a single nutritious item had passed through your lips in almost 72 hours. But isn’t that part of what birthdays are all about?

Your OTHER party this year was at a place called Playsource, which is basically an indoor play place that has tons of stuff to keep little people like you busy. This year, we planned your party with your buddy, Paxton, who was not only born on the same day as you, he was also born at the very same hospital. It was a bit on the crazy side, because between the two of you, we were expecting 35 kids (12 from us, 23 from them), not to mention, all of their parents. THAT IS A LOT OF PEOPLE. I have to admit that I was a bit overwhelmed by the thought of it, and I was more than a little worried that you weren’t going to feel like it was your special day. But, as usual, I worried for nothing and you had a terrific time. The only thing that bothered you about sharing your party was that when everyone sang Happy Birthday, they sang, “Happy Birthday to Paxton and Rory! Happy Birthday to you!” and afterwards you said to me, “Mamma, I didn’t like the ‘Paxton and Rory’ song, I wanted them to say, ‘Just Rory’!” So, note to self, if we ever have a shared party again (which is highly unlikely!) make sure that we sing a separate birthday song for each kid. Sheesh!



As with any party, we ended up having a ton of food left over, especially cupcakes (Paxton’s mom and I made all 85 of them ourselves, by the way!). So for every night after your party that we still had cupcakes left, you made us put a candle in one for you and sing, “Happy Birthday to JUST RORY! Happy Birthday to YOU!”. This went on for at least four nights (hence the “Endless Birthday” theme), so I think that MORE than made up for the song transgression, don’t you?



I can’t talk about your birthday, of course, without mentioning some of your favorite presents. Your Nana and Poppi gave you a “big boy bicycle” with training wheels, and you were so excited that you immediately jumped on it and started pedaling your little heart out. We are so impressed by how fast you got the hang of it, and now I spend at least part of every day huffing and puffing as I chase you around the neighborhood. Good exercise for both of us! I get such a kick out of watching you (for those of you with kids, it kinda reminds me a bit of what Elmo looks like when he rides a bike on Sesame Street!), it’s so darn cute to see your little legs going round and round! And sometimes, my chest puffs up with so much pride that I can’t even breathe – but somehow I still manage to have a silly grin on my face anyway…





Your other favorite gifts are High School Musical related (are you surprised?), especially the new Wii game that your father and I bought you that lets you sing along to all of your favorite HSM songs karaoke style with your very own microphone. For you, it just doesn’t get any better than that! And even though we probably wouldn’t admit this in public, your father and I think it’s pretty cool, too. Where else is our vast knowledge of High School Musical songs going to come in handy? And now we will have an endless source of entertainment at our fingertips that looks a little something like this:



Happy Birthday, big guy!

Love,
Mama

It's a Small World...

Back when I was working at the Mother of All Coffee Houses, I was taking a girl's order and asked for her name. She said it was Marin, which happens to be my niece's name as well. So I said conversationally, "You know, Marin is a name you don't hear very often, but I have a Marin in my family. And the funny thing is, her name is Marin Pearce and there is actually another Marin Pearce that lives in Ventura, the same town as her. Crazy, eh?" The girl gets this really weird look on her face and she says, "Are you kidding?! That's my name! I'm the other Marin Pearce in Ventura!"

Now what are the chances of that?

A Golf Pro in the Making

Our entertainment for the evening:




Perhaps we should start saving for a set of golf clubs, although the back scratcher is kind of a nice throw back to my husband's Mariposa roots. Just kidding, honey!