Whatcha doing?

I have yo-yoed between crazy nesting type of stuff to indifferent this past week. I blame it on the swine flu. Since our youngest son has type 1 diabetes we take all flu illnesses seriously. As anyone with a chronic condition should. I took inventory of our medicine cabinet and re-stocked it. I have gone between cleaning like a mad woman to doing nothing. It is maddening I tell you.

Our house has a huge pantry. Since we live in the middle of nowhere it comes in handy to be able to go out of town and shop at one of those warehouse type places and buy large quantities of necessities. If I see a great deal on one of our food staples at the grocery store I can stock up. Until recently that is.

Recently I have been playing the freezer and pantry diving game to save money. The rules are you allow yourself X amount of money to spend that week on groceries and necessities. When the money is gone it is gone and you make do with what you have. I took it one step further and decided it was a good time to take the pantry and freezer down to nothing. I spent the least amount of money I could on groceries while still cooking nutritious and tasty meals. It takes alot of planning and cooking especially from scratch. In my mind, the end results would be worth it, because we would save money and allow us to have a fresher inventory of food in the future.

We did save money and used up the majority of the food. We were getting down to the orphans in the pantry, a can of pumpkin here, a can of beets there. My meal planning was getting to be pretty clever and inventive. In theory I could restock the pantry when we weren't saving up for landscaping or furniture or *gasp* when the economy recovered. Instead my efforts were thwarted by the swine flu. Because we live in California, close to the Mexico border, along with our decision to take precautions I have re-stocked some of the pantry.

Darn swine flu. I hope it fizzles out and we can all stay healthy. Recently I have read the views of some people that by preparing you are panicking or adding to the hysteria. In the past Dh and I laughed at the Y2K situation and were to busy to notice outbreaks in far away lands but we were newlyweds without responsibilities. As time went on we had children and with those amazing creatures comes a sense of vulnerability. Now we notice things, we pray for their health and safety and we take precautions. God Bless.

Coincidence...

I was just about to post an update about how we haven't done much of anything in regards to landscaping and organizing when this showed up. I scrambled to the phone to order some fill dirt. They were extremely understanding and told me they would fit us in today. In the immortal words of my dd "Today is a good day."

Should one of these trees go?

While I have been organizing and cleaning dh has gotten on the ball landscape wise and found someone to level and fill our front and back yard. Afterwards we can start installing a sprinkler system and landscaping.

In the meantime I have to get a landscape plan. I have been thinking about it on and off for the past year. I am going mostly on instinct with just enough reading up on the subject to be dangerous.

I am contemplating a radical change in the front or our home which dh will most likely think I have lost my mind and balk at the idea. I think I may want to take out one of the trees in the front. The one in front of the door to be exact and replace it with a smaller flowering tree or maybe nothing. What do you think?

Cleaning part of Spring Cleaning.

The only room left to organize and go through as far as decluttering is the office/craft area. It is overwhelming. *sigh* Everything that I haven't known what to do with has gone in there. We have shut the doors in hopes that organizing elves will come in the night and take care of it. A haphazard mess including misc papers, momentos and if you ask dh just a pile of junk that needs to be taken out. I am leaving that task for tomorrow.

I was a cleaning maniac yesterday. I did most of the deep down cleaning that you just have to be in the right mindset for. When I get that way my kids run for cover. They played out front for most of the day having picnic's, bringing out the tent and just being kids. No Wii, computer, nothing artificial or simulated. Just lots of fresh air and sunshine = tired kids and one happy mama.

Since it is Tuesday and since I like Tuesday's. I thought I would add a weekly blurb linking three places of interest that I have found on the internet. In honor of this weeks Spring Cleaning.

1. Non-toxic Home care. I am embracing the old methods of cleaning lately simply cause it is cheap, fun and easy.

2. Styleathome.com This is actually a magazine from Canada. Nope I am note Canadian or ever been to Canada actually. None the less, I found some interesting articles and quizes.

3. Susan Boyle. Unexpected. A wonderful modern example of how you cannot judge someone from the first impression and cynicism. It is not what is on the outside but what is inside.

Closets.

When we built the house I insisted on putting closets anywhere I could imagine. At our one and only design meeting, dh would laugh when I said we need another closet, the architect would raise one of his brow's, and the builder would sigh loudly. I am a pretty shy and non-confrontational type person so when most of my suggestions were shot down, I went with the flow so to speak, until the subject of closets and size of rooms came up. Then I stood my ground. From previous houses we had lived in I knew how important having lots of storage options were.

Our vision at the time was for low maintenance. We wanted a clean and uncluttered abode. A place for everything and everything in it's place. Don't get me wrong we didn't want it to look like a magazine picture or a cold formal showroom. We don't mind toys laying aimlessly throughout our house or the place to look like an actual family lives in it. But we had lived in high maintenance dream homes in the past. That wasn't what we were aiming for. We wanted functional. Functional to a woman is closets. So closets there are.

Closets to organize and clear out. My task for the day. Closets. Here is one example:
Before
After

Spring cleaning, organizing and moving forward...

It's Spring. Yay. I am usually very ho-hum about Spring but this year I am ready for some new beginnings and growth. Everything that symbolizes the Spring season. So around these parts we are fully embracing the age old Spring cleaning routine. The kid's are on Spring Break and I plan on using them to the best of their abilities. I have decided to take before and after pictures of our spring cleaning and organizing efforts.

Our first project was the garage. Before starting I wrote down my three requirements:

1. Everything off the floor and away from inquiring children.
2. A streamlined look.
3. It had to be an easy straightforward project that fit into our budget.

My first step was to look for ideas on the Internet. With three children and living in the middle of nowhere I have learned it is much easier to decided what I want in the comfort of my own home. It makes for a much better shopping experience trust me. Once I got up from my Internet shopping induced haze to grab a diet Pepsi and snack, I decided to stick with the original plan and picked the Hyloft shelf system at Lowes.

Dh put up the shelves last week for me before we organized and cleaned it out.

I am almost embarrassed to admit that for the past year we couldn't park in the garage cause of all the miscellaneous junk I just didn't have the energy to go through. I had two garage sales even before this picture was taken, yes I am blushing. It truly was just a crazy amount of stuff.

Because I like a streamlined looked I went with wire shelves along the top of the back walls. I originally looked at the type that hang from the ceiling but felt that for our purpose and stuff it would be hard to get to some of my bigger items. Like our large fake Christmas tree.

Much better now don't you think?

Where to start....

We moved into our home last year. We had it built, we picked the floor plan, the light fixtures, the color on the walls, almost everything. It was an exciting and challenging time. Once it was over I was happy to be done with making decisions about the house for the moment. We had a mountain of belongings to go through from previous homes in location's much different than where we live now. Left over decorations that held sentimental attachments, boxes of baby photo's mixed in with a whole lot of cast-off stuff and belongings. I soon became overwhelmed and we lost our vision of what we wanted our new home to be. Life kept us busy and not much attention was given to the house except to keep it clean.

Now a year later we still have a complete blank canvas to work off. Nothing has been done decorating wise or landscape wise. It feels simultaneously exciting and scary, especially in this economy, to try to transform our house to our home.

This is a picture of our front door during the build.

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