An Insight or Two

#1 - I am not a runner.  I ran today at the Y.  And just to make things clear; I ran and no one was chasing me with a machete. It makes me hurt. My knees, my hips.  But Justin and I are going to participate in the Warrior Dash in June and worse than the pain of my knees and hips hurting, would be the humiliation of falling on my face and being carried off the course by Justin or some other macho men.  So run and get into shape I must.

#2 - We are supreme packrats.  I started my day by spending 1.5 hours in Ella's room.  I made a small dent in the mess.  I bagged up clothes, toys, garbage (broken and missing part toys) and I am one of those people that has to push myself with each item not to say "well, we might need this if Mercury crosses Mars on the 10th day of the 8th month at 2:32 AM. Then what will we do?!".  After Ella's room I spent another 1.5 hours in the basement trying to make some headway with the 93 bags of kids clothes that we have down there.  All in all, I made good progress and it feels good to purge!!

 #3 - It takes me double the time to get "gussied up" now that I am in my 40s. Not sure if it's that my face really requires more work, or I just care more about how I look when it's time to make the effort.  Or maybe it's really just the fact that I usually lock myself in my room with a glass of wine when it's time to get ready to go out, which makes it more enticing to take longer...

 #4 - My husband can play the part of empathic when he needs to. I never let Justin forget that he once scored a (big fat ZERO) in Empathy on a personality test that he took in college.  ZIP.  NADA. NOTHING.  Today in all the cleaning, I about cut my finger off in the basement.  Even though that is something that he does at least twice a week on a job, he very kindly got a band-aid and wrapped it around my finger, cutting off the circulation and turning my finger purple.  But the blood stopped and he fed me an Advil and I felt better.  I think he should have scored at least a 2 on that test.

99 Piles of Junk...

99 piles of junk in my house, 99 piles of junk...sort one out, throw sh*t out...98 piles of junk in my house...

It is totally a never ending battle around here! Over the weekend I felt compelled to tackle the laundry room. The piles of junk in there had gotten out of control, making it difficult to actually DO laundry in the laundry room. There was an avalanche of junk threatening to fall on my head...



So, I pulled everything out of there, threw it all on the kitchen floor and started sorting and pitching. BAGS of candy left over from Easter and July 4th parade (tossed!), 5 purses from my various purse changes over the last year (or more...), stuff that needed dry cleaned, snacks, juices and pantry overflow, parts of Halloween costumes, on and on...

The problem is...this is the point in organizing projects that I tend to lose steam.
I see ALL this stuff scattered all over and I'm like "UGH, what have I done!?"

But I marched onward and continued sorting, tossing, sorting, tossing...sorting, tossing...

And then!

We now have a beautifully organized laundry room
that we can actually do laundry in!!

Justin worked on the hall closet the same day with similar results - feels good to have some semblance of organization in the house!

Hmmm, what can be next?