Negative side to being away!

Well I'm finding out in a really big hurry that I have really not been home enough this month! The end of June/beginning of July I was gone for about a week. Then last week I was gone again.. The result to all this travelling is that nothing is getting cleaned in my house. Well I know you are all saying, so what, if you aren't home it doesn't get messy. Which is true to a certain extent, other than the fact that I had a million and one things to get done in the week that I was home so my house didn't really get cleaned all that good other than the main living area. The end result of that being that there is a layer of dust on everything everywhere. Trust me I don't live well with dust, if I see that there is dust on my coffee table/end tables in my living room out comes the dust rag and I have to clean it all so it looks nice and clean again! I'm anal that way! lol :)

So what have I been doing since I got home..well other than making some cards because how could I not do so after being so inspired from Convention.. it has been a cleaning week! First with laundry, then cleaning bathrooms, from there dusting my livingroom, and then my bedroom and some other areas. I feel like my house is getting cleaner which is great.. BUT I still need to mop, and vacuum as well as see if I can't find a better way to organize my fabric, because right now it just isn't working for me. My extra room in my house has become my sewing room and it has piles of fabric everywhere. Then when I need a smaller piece of fabric I need to dig through the pile which means it isn't neat anymore and the re-organizing begins once again. ugh!

The other thing that I got to do once I got home was pick my beans and peas from my garden. While they are yummy when they are fresh I was like "really" because I honestly didn't need more work right now lol :) That being said we've really been enjoying them so I'll stop complaining! I also have a gallon of raspberries that I need to put in containers or baggies to go into the freezer. So lots of fun things happening here!

Anyway, watch out for the next post in a while because I promise there will be some fun included in that one! :)

Cleaning - again!

Well I decided that today was the day to finish tackelling the 2nd room in our house aka: the office :) Anyway I had been debating about moving somethings around in there to see what would happen. In the end I moved something and put it right back, and in the process of doing that well this is the end result: MESS :( I'm not sure if it was better before I did all the re-arranging and then putting it back to it's original spot or not. Either way it is pretty depressing looking at all my "stuff" trying to figure out where I should put it. I know this much it sure isn't going back into cardboard SU! boxes if I can help it! I took it out of them for a reason, and don't want to have it in there again for another year before I decide to try do something about it!

My problem is, mainly my house is so small that is it hard trying to find places for everything with out keeping it sitting in a box :( I actually need another bookcase but don't know where I would put it if I got another one. Having another book case would solve the problem with half of my shelf storage in the closet being taken up with books.  My fabric needs a better home than a box.... don't know what though :(  One thing I do know is that someday when we get our own house, living in a little house is going to make me really know what I want/need in that house! LOL :)

Now I purposely took pictures of the mess for everyone to see so that I get it all cleaned up and can post end result pictures! haha  :) But.. not till it is all neat :)

Un-ending mess..

Wow! It honestly seems like I'm never going to get through with sorting and throwing out things/garbage.. aka clutter in my office right now. Today I spent another 1/2-1hr sorting through a box, and through a few piles of things and I have to admit it looks better now, but there is still piles of papers/scrapbooking stuff etc laying around. One of these days I'm going to be SO happy because I have got it all cleaned up, which means I can sew on the table in the office again, and not have to put the extra leaf in my diningroom table and end up leaving it that way for a whole week. Tomorrow is another day, and hopefully I can get a few more things sorted so that it gets a little bit neater in there!

I have to admit that cleaning out the office and sorting through boxes is making me take a whole new look at things that I am keeping, because everything that I keep is going to have to be tossed or sorted again someday.  So right now it may seem painful at times but I know that I'm making progress while making myself analyze my saving habits which is definitely a good thing. Less clutter, less mess, less to deal with another day.. in the long run, it will make me a lot happier! As long as I keep telling myself this I think I can do it!

Right now, well I need to go get a few other things done :)

Update

Well I was just sitting in the "office" and decided that I had better post an update post on life in general since I haven't done that in a long time! It seems like life has a way of getting busier and busier, and even if it isn't I just never get around to blogging anymore which is a sad concept! haha..

So what have I been doing with myself lately? Well good question, most days that I'm not cleaning house not to much other than trying to entertain myself... sitting around reading, cleaning my house a little bit, cooking, swimming almost every afternoon in the pool at the in-laws. So as you can see I do have ways of keeping myself somewhat busy. Now as for work, well I have 3 houses that I currently clean. One of these jobs is temporary while the other lady went to Russia to visit her family. This is a gigantic house, and takes 2 people 5 hours to clean EVERY week, it is absolutely crazy, and the house is already pretty much spotless, but hey I guess I won't complain it gives me something to do. Then one of the other houses that I clean I've been cleaning since this spring and it is every other week that I go there and dust, vacuum, clean bathrooms, mop etc. so mostly basic cleaning. Then the last place.. well I've cleaned there since we got married :) My mother-in-laws house... I like cleaning her house! haha... easy to clean (usually) and doesn't take too long!

For some funny reason when I was growing up cleaning house was my least favorite job.. now I actually don't mind it! Some days I wonder if it helps that it isn't yours and you clean it and can walk away and not worry about it getting dirty again. My own house suffers at times though! I have to admit I'm horrible at vacuuming, but it doesn't seem like the carpet gets overly dirty, I mean we don't spend a ton of time sitting around making it dirty either, haha, so in the mean time I can count how many times I've vacuumed since we have gotten married on my two hands.. my bad.. LOL :) Dusting is a completely different story, although it has gotten much much better now that we have a lawn and garden to make the dust settle down! When we first got married cleaning my house and wanting it spotless all the time seemed to be an obsession, I mean I never cared that much before I got married what my room looked like! That did wear off in a big hurry though, I mean you get sick of dusting every two days or so... soon that turned into every 4-5 days.. then into every week, and now hmm every 1 1/2 weeks or so.  The difference being that there is less dust floating around making me feel like I have to dust as well! Which makes me happy!

Anyway so that is that part of my life. Now my latest goal is to get pictures scrapbooked! I decided that I felt like scrapbooking and I really need to get my wedding pictures scrapbooked so that I can look at them when I want to, and not have to look at them on my computer or dig through my BOXES of pictures ( I have three Costco boxes) to look at them. So my goal is to get 25-30 pages done in a week and see if I can't be really close to being finished in a month! Tall orders?! I realize that, but I figure if I didn't set myself up such a big goal it would be taking forever to get it done, and I still have honeymoon pictures to scrapbook as well as tons of other pictures that I've taken over the years that really need doing! Some of them I think I'm going to scrapbook using My Digital Studio from Stampin' Up and get them printed by their printer and see how they turn out. There is something about scrapbooking them the old school way, paper, ribbons, brads, eyelets etc. but I'm feeling like I'm too far behind to keep this up so we shall see if the digital way works better(eventually anyway!).  Anyway for now I'm off to go scrapbook some more pages, yesterday I got 4 pages done and today I decided I better get at least 4-6 done because there is going to be a few days this week I'm not going to get that many finished. Although if I actually count how many pages I have finished since last week Thursday since that is when I decided to do this.. I have already finished 18 pages, and would have today and tomorrow to meet my quota for the week, but I decided that I was going to start my weeks from Monday to Saturday since that seems easier to keep track of!