Chuck Day 2014: Before and After

                                                  Chuck Day 2014 was a success! 

      We began around 9 AM with the main part of the basement. This is the area that includes my desk (aka: the dumping ground for all things paper), the woodstove (and firewood hoops), and other random "stuff". Here is the "BEFORE" photo from the area of the woodstove looking at my desk:

After a trip to Walmart for some shelves, and about three hours of work we have created order where chaos once ruled:

The desk still needs some organization but since most of it has to do with taxes (home, farm, woodworking business) it will wait until January. But now at least, I can see that my desktop is gray with fake wood trim. I was beginning to wonder...

I have moved my sewing machines into the main room so I can better organize my sewing room for Christmas projects. I should have photos of the newly organized sewing room in a few days. The trophies have been displayed nicely on a new shelf and have been labeled with the correct owner. A new shelf was also added for books that are specific to either my sewing, my writing, or our farm.

After a quick lunch we moved on to the "play area". The "BEFORE" photo shows how everything had been basically piled onto any and every horizontal service. The photo doesn't show the girls' desk area that is piled with books, papers, CD's, and DVD's. You also can't see the layer of dust and dirt from when the chicks were kept in this room for their first few weeks, but trust me, it was there!




























By 4 PM we were just about finished except for the last sweeping/vacuuming and dusting of Sam's fire department awards and knick-knacks:

The homeschool shelf was reduced from four shelves to just two, now that only Rachel and Samantha are being schooled. Hannah fixed the broken bench and we noticed that the couch has seen better days. We'll start saving up for a sleeper sofa or a futon type couch; something that will give us options when we host missionaries or have sleepovers with the cousins.

 

The girls have fewer toys and they are taking better care of their things, so we only had a small pile for donation and just three trash bags for the dump. We discovered that they had not taken down the Christmas decorations from last year and it was voted that they would remain up since Christmas is only 55 days away!

So the basement is now neat and organized! There is still work to do in the mudroom, laundry room, and my sewing room. Those are smaller projects that we will tackle as we have time. So how was your Chuck Day?

It's That Time Of Year!

It's that time of year again!

Chuck Day will soon be upon us!

If you are unfamiliar with Chuck Day, you can get educated here: "'It's All About Chuck' Day", and here: Chuck Day 2013. I think it is awesome the number of people I now know who have read about Chuck Day and have created their own version for their families!

We have chosen Saturday, November 1st for our Chuck Day this year. I was surveying the "WrecK" room the other day and realized that we'll need to change how we do things this year. The girls are older and the numbers of toys and games has dwindled considerably. We will still pull everything out, clean, and sort through it all, but it definitely won't be the hours-long process, like in years past.

This year I think we will need to switch our focus to the areas where we have things stored: the mudroom, laundry room, and office spaces. I am even considering taking on the bedrooms. (Eeeek!) More of the girls' things are stored there instead of in the "play area," which can make the rooms cluttered messes. I am considering stretching Chuck Day into Chuck Week and tackle one bedroom per day. I might even take on the "Sewing Room"! (Yikes!)

So in anticipation, I will be shopping for garbage bags, plastic totes, and other types of containers. We'll need a new broom and dustpan, since the last one "somehow just broke." (??Really??) I cleaned the filters on the vacuum yesterday and dug out the oldest towels and cut them into rags. This morning, Sam is reorganizing the outside garbage area in anticipation of the onslaught. I do believe we are ready to take on Chuck Day!

"Sure I am this day we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set before us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us."
   - Winston Churchill

The Playroom

We cleaned and organized the playroom. It's really not a playroom anymore. The girls have mostly outgrown the toys. We've kept a few for when we have younger guests and things like Lego's, which they will never outgrow. 

We sorted through the books, keeping only those that we really liked (we like books and as you can see from the photos, we still have a LOT!). I finally managed to let go of the encyclopedias that were from the 1960's and the huge set from the 1980's. I did keep the set from 1883, which are just really cool to look through.

We forced Nathalie to cull through her hundreds, if not thousands, of cookbooks. I purchased a computerized cookbook subscription for her (bigoven.com) which will store, organize, and make meal plans with grocery lists, from her recipes. (Check off another New Year's Resolution!) 

We still need to find a solution for the trophies, plaques, and awards. The area we had used is just too small for what the girls want to keep. But other than that, the room looks good!

I gave away any homeschool things that were for grades 6 or under.
Still not sure what we're doing for school next year so we hung onto 7th grade and up.

This isn't even a quarter of the trophies, and there is no more room.

Just a few "toys" remain.

Sewing Room

The sewing room was next on my list for cleaning. The sewing room was confused. It was a sewing room, but it was an office supply room too. It also was the 4-H "stuff" room. We took a few days and worked slowly to straighten it all out. 4-H was given its own section of the room and the office supplies are now out with the computer and printer.

I made Abby clean the window. It was kind of gross. The boxes hold patterns organized by person.
 I need to make some new curtains for the window.

This corner needs a little more work, but it's the ribbon, thread and current projects area.

Shelves for 4-H stuff, old tax papers, and craft supplies.

Sewing machine table, shelf of fabrics and sewing books.

All rick-rack, bias tape, and hem tape are organized by color in this repurposed shoe  organizer.

The Laundry Room

SO it was decided that we couldn't wait until Saturday to do the laundry room. Too much to do on Saturday and we needed to food shop on Thursday. Since the laundry room is also the pantry, it made sense to get that room sorted and organized BEFORE going food shopping.

Everything removed from the laundry room and piled in the basement.
We look like we belong on an episode of Hoarders!

We washed down every shelf, the walls and the floor. Found a lovely surprise of maple syrup spilled down behind the oil tank. That was so much fun to clean. NOT! Then we sorted through everything, keeping what we REALLY need.

Christmas on the upper left. Chafing dishes etc. on upper right. 

Built-in ironing board!

Mom and Dad gave us a nearly new dryer that they weren't using! Ours was making some horrendous noises! 
Good dishes are stored safely with room for more!
Laundry baskets for clean laundry and bed sheet storage.

Pantry shelves are all organized!

Laundry soap next to the washing machine. What a concept!

Jars for goat milk and cheese making supplies.

Abby took a truck load of stuff to Goodwill tonight. There's about 6 huge bags of garbage to go to the dump on Saturday! Next week is a busy week, but Hannah is home from school on Thursday and Friday, so I'll have an extra helper to tackle the OFFICE Area!

The Kitchen

The first step in my New Year's resolution was to overhaul my kitchen. With the girls in public school we needed to make an area for lunches. I also had way too many pots and pans and serving utensils than even a family our size could possibly use.

So we started by taking everything out of the all of the cupboards and drawers, and stacking it all in the living room and dining room. Next we scrubbed the kitchen from top to bottom. Every drawer, every cupboard. We even moved the fridge and did underneath and behind it ::: shudder:::

We then organized the kitchen by activities: cooking, coffee, eating, washing, etc. The girls all worked hard and the kitchen looks amazing! Next week we'll tackle the laundry room/pantry/off-season storage room.

The "Lunch" drawer has the parts needed for making school/work lunches.

The "Lunch" cupboard, underneath the lunch drawer, has the storage containers, and microwavable dry goods. The lunch boxes will be hung on hooks on the inside of the cupboard door, as soon as I get them.

This cupboard will be for the baking pans, loaf pans, cake pans, etc. It was rusty and nasty so we spray painted it with what we had on hand: Rustoleum black.
It was a might chilly with all the windows and doors open to vent the fumes!

Under the sink now only contains items for washing dishes and three vases.
I'll be getting a wastebasket for underneath to hide the recyclables.

The "Coffee" area includes the coffee maker and tea maker. The bottom shelf has everything that goes with those activities. The other kitchen staples are on the upper two shelves.

Bottom shelf for prescriptions, middle shelf for Nathalie's cake decorating supplies, and top shelf for Nat's recipe tins.

Pared down the glasses to 16 that sort of match and reduced the number of mugs to equal the number of cup hooks.

Pots and pans are no longer in the lazy susan cupboard where the lids always fell to the back and couldn't be reached.

Paper products and mixing bowls in the cupboard.

My old honey cabinet is now storage for baggies, foils, and cookbooks. The potholders will be hung on hooks inside the door, once I get them.

100 Things

I finished reading The 100 Thing Challenge recently. (I am blazing through my "want to read" list!) This book was touted as the story of a man who lived for a year with only 100 things and how he reconnected with himself and his faith in the process. Uhmmm. Not exactly.

First, it was 100 personal things. And that was just the first "qualifier" for his list. He had lots of exceptions for his 100 things and reasons for why this thing or that thing didn't count. He counted his books as 1 thing: a library. All of his socks and undergarments together counted as 1 thing. His bed didn't count because he shared that with his wife. Etc. etc. etc.

Second, he claimed he was a christian and that one of his reasons for doing this was to reconnect with his spirituality. He used occasional foul language and gave some rather inappropriate anecdotes in the book. I disliked having to wade through muck to try and find the nugget of truth. He never really discussed whether or not he found his spirituality through this exercise. He did find that he could live without purchasing things and taught himself to carefully consider all the costs to spending money on something. Not really spiritual.

He basically writes about why he developed the idea, the rules he created for it, all the exceptions to the rules he created, how he decided what was important to keep, and all the publicity he received. He states over and over that this was "his personal challenge", and he uses this to justify his actions whenever someone challenges one of his rules or exceptions. He does explain some about "consumerism", the pitfalls of buying what we don't really need, and how people use shopping as a type of therapy, which is only a temporary fix.

This book was okay. It didn't really inspire me. It did cause me to realize that we already live pretty simply in our home. We just don't have the finances to go "mall-crawling" and use shopping as therapy. We are already pretty good at "making do with what we have". If you are looking to be inspired to reduce what you have, to clear out the clutter, and to free up space and time in your life, then I suggest reading Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider. Definitely a more inspiring and helpful book.

I'll be donating "The 100 Thing Challenge" to the local library book sale.

Half

I finished reading "The Power of Half" the other day. It was a very good book about a family that decided to sell their HUGE home and downsize to a smaller home. They contributed half of the profit from the sale to help villages in Ghana. I know that this family of four moved into a "smaller" home that is still larger than my home, which houses seven people. But, the principle is still a good one: If everyone gave half of what they had, to help those who have nothing, the world would be a better place.

We (the girls and I) were discussing this book one morning and then the conversation moved on to which animals would be going to the auction in a couple of weeks. And then it occurred to us: Our goats this year are named for cheeses from various countries, many of them poor countries. For example, Abby has a buckling named Ayib for cheese from Ethiopia. We decided that we will donate half of whatever the selling price is for that goat, to an aid organization in whatever country they were named for. It will be merely a drop in the bucket of what is needed, but it is still a drop.

The other book I have been reading is "Organized Simplicity". This book is, by far, the best organizing/simplicity movement book I have ever read. Not only is it well laid out, includes worksheets, and great ideas about organization, it also shows you the "why" of it all. While the "motivational" parts can get a little lengthy, with some of it being stuff I already knew, the author does a great job of packaging it all up. The desire to improve your home environment is rooted in facts, not emotion. And we all know that emotions simply won't carry us through the day-to-day tedium of organizing and culling to create order, and then maintaining that order.

The section on "finding your home's purpose" was just what we needed. As a family we were able to really lay out what our goals were and decide if what we were doing was moving us toward or away from those goals. It is so much easier to make decisions about things by checking if they match up with your purpose.

I borrowed this book from my library, but I plan on purchasing it soon.

Good Bye 07; Hello 08!

Today is the last day of 2007. It is also Sam's birthday. I am sure he will have fun with the guys at the firehouse, as he is working overtime, AGAIN. (He has informed me that he WILL be home tomorrow. He muttered something about after working 96 hours straight they couldn't make him stay another minute.)

So today is the day I make my New Year's resolutions. Maybe this year will be different. Maybe this year when I resolve to not lose my cool with the kids I will actually keep it longer than the 2 hour record I attained last New Year's. (Although in my defense, walking in on Rachel and Samantha smearing yellow and blue UNWASHABLE, paint on their floor, walls, and beds would've pushed even Mother Theresa over the edge.)

So here goes:
1. Lose some weight. Any amount would be nice. 15 pounds would be a good start. Heck, one pound would be a good start.
2. Yell less. Just in general, at town meetings, at the kids, at Sam, at God.
3. Get more organized.
4. Stay organized. (with five kids and a pack rat husband whose favorite saying is: "But we might need it someday," this one just might be unattainable.)

That's it. I think four is a good list. Technically, I don't have to start until tomorrow, right?