Well, today was truly one of the first days that I have felt really really good since I got pregnant. I’ve had good days here and there, but I would still have a little extra tiredness or nausea. But the past couple of days have started an upswing that I can definitely get on board with.

I guess this is to be expected since this is my last week in the first trimester. And it’s usually the time most pregnant women actually start talking about their pregnancy and sharing it with others. Nope. Not me. I shared early, and you guys are going to have to deal with the looooong wait before you meet this little fall pumpkin.

I think I would have felt completely alone and depressed if I hadn’t had people cheering me on through the morning sickness phase, so I’m glad I shared early. It really did help knowing that so-and-so was going through the same thing or knew how I felt.

And thank you to everyone that has been really supportive in my hiatus from the internet and taking pictures and posting to the blog / facebook / twitter. I pretty much just turned into a hermit for a while, and that’s just what I needed to do to get through the daily nausea.

And THEN I ended up with the world’s worst stomach flu that took off 9 lbs in less than 24 hours. I’ve yet to gain all of that weight back, and that was over a week ago. Luckily, no one else in the family got it, so I was able to recuperate pretty quickly, but all of that on top of the regular sickness I was dealing with just kind of made it really hard for me to function. Paying bills is pretty much the only thing I’ve done at my desk in months, and I’m pretty happy that got done.

But I think the end of THE SICK is here, and I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. Probably not as much as I did before, because while I was offline, I realized that I had been spending WAY too much time online. It was taking away from time that I should have been cleaning or doing laundry, time that I could have used to organize my life more effectively, and more importantly, time with my family.

I didn’t realize how much of a timesuck it was until it wasn’t sucking any of my time.

And I’ve vowed to spend more time with Emma (after all, she’s only going to be an only child for a bit longer) and spend more time cleaning / organizing so that we don’t live in cluttered chaos all the time.

So that’s that.

Along those lines, I have really gotten things organized on my computer this morning. I started out with over 700 emails in my inbox – 70’ish that hadn’t even been read, yet. An hour or so later, I have 33 emails in my inbox – 0 unread. And the 33 that are sitting there are really just waiting on me to tag them and put them into folders.

I also paid bills, planned out the rest of this month and the first half of next month’s bills, billed some clients, started organizing our business paperwork, and sat on the floor playing with Emma.

Over the next few days, I’m going to unsubscribe to emails that I don’t need/want as they come into my inbox to keep spam and things that I just don’t have time to read at bay.

If Emma decides to take a nap today, I’m going to tackle the super duper cluttered top of my desk, but I need to make piles on the floor to do that, and I know better than to do that while a 2.5 year old is awake and within a 5-mile radius.

—–

So I wrote all of that yesterday and then got busy with other things. And then Emma didn’t take a nap. And then she was sent to bed at 7pm for hitting the tv and throwing the remote control. Good times.

But today has been yet another productive day, and I’m on my way out the door to run some errands before I pick her up from school.

In the meantime, here is a cute cute CUTE recent picture of Emma that my niece took at my nephew’s baseball game. One of these days, I’ll pick my camera back up and take some pictures, but in the meantime, I’ve rather enjoyed the creative break.

You can’t tell me you don’t want to just pinch her little cheeks and pull on her pigtails.

I owe you guys a texture tutorial, but this weekend was CRAZY busy, and I’m just now sitting down at my computer to do fun things.

I will do a processing tutorial for this image tomorrow …

And then a texture for portraits tutorial later in the week. :)

Real quick … my mom emailed me this weekend about my simplifying life post, and she knows me oh so well. She said …

I know you are doing great with your kitchen but I still say the first step y’all should take is getting rid of clutter, everywhere.  It will make everything else so much simpler.

She is so right. I’m all, “Woohoo!! Look at me! I kept the kitchen clean for a week!” but that’s not the heart of the problem.

The heart of the problem is …

• receipts
• fusible interfacing instructions
• knick knacks
• sunglasses
• Emma’s hair clips and elastics (my word, those things are everywhere)
• spare buttons from new winter jackets
• coupons
• an FM transmitter to my iPod
• Emma’s eczema lotion

And that is just the stuff that is on the tall kitchen counter that separates our kitchen from our living room.

ACK!

Of course, it multiplies like bunnies, and I just can’t keep up with it. Another blog that I read said something else that really rang true to me …

organization simply requires a ‘home’ for everything

I know what Ken’s thinking … that I’ll go out and buy more junk to hold junk. But I won’t. I already have places and boxes and buckets and bins to keep the stuff that we need to keep – I just need to USE them. The rest of it is going in the trash or the Goodwill pile or Craigslist. Period.

We just don’t need to keep so much STUFF around that we “may” use one day or “hope” to get around to.

Mom also suggested that I just tackle everything in the morning and then the afternoon can be my computer / picture editing / quietly folding laundry / making supper time. Again, this would work best for me, because I tend to put off a lot of my cleaning when Emma’s napping because I don’t want to wake her up.

So … you may not see me around as much for coffee chat. But just know that I’m working my tail off and making a huge dent in this chaos we call life.

Thanks, mom. And thank all of you for the support and kind words! xo

ps – I’m scheduling this to post first thing in the morning, but I assure you, I am writing it at 9:15pm on Sunday night. ;)

It’s late, everyone is in bed, and I’m here in front of the computer, as usual. I seem to get most of my work done late at night when the house is quiet and still.

So … project organization is going really well. There are two large bags in the back of my car that will be going to Goodwill tomorrow morning while Emma is in school. I pretty much have to hide it from her, because … well … most of it is her toys. Shhhhhhh!

And also? The kitchen is spotless right now!! And it’s been clean for almost a week! I have a whole routine – I run the dishwasher and get my coffee all ready at night so all I have to do is hit the “on” button when we come downstairs. And  yes, I do have a coffee pot with a timer, but I lost the instruction booklet, and I have NO idea how to set it. It also blinks 12:00 constantly.

Anyway, while Emma is eating her breakfast, I work on my first cup of coffee and unload the dishwasher from the night before so it can be loaded throughout the day.

I know what most of you are thinking … that’s how you’ve been doing it for years. But remember, my mind just doesn’t work that way. However, walking into the kitchen sets up the rest of my day, and if it’s clean, then I have instant balance to get started on the other gajillion things that need to be done every day.

I also cleaned off *most* of my desk, but I still have a few wayward piles that need to be worked on. I plan on leaving my computer off until I get the last of it organized tomorrow morning. I’m too tempted by the dinging of my email. Or Twitter. Or Facebook. Yes, I have a problem.

Already have a gameplan written out for the rest of the week, thanks to my handy dandy MomAgenda planner. I know, I buy a new planner every year and then use it for about three weeks, but this? This thing is serious. It’s an all-in-one planner for moms. It’s got a normal day planning area, but then it has 4 blocks underneath for each kid. Well, since we only have the one, I used the other blocks for cleaning, our business and training for the half-marathon. It also has a little space for dinner, which works just perfectly with my meal plan. It’s for real, yo. And I can tell that it will become my third arm in no time at all.

I think I can get the rest of the house finished this week, and then we’ll have to tackle the garage together. But as much as I hate to say this, because I don’t want to put it off … it will probably have to wait until it’s a bit warmer.

I won’t do this every week or anything, but several of you actually asked me to keep posting about it … and it’s basically free therapy for me. ;) I know many of you said you have the same issues, and I know that I get inspired when I read about others making positive changes around their house, so maybe, just maybe, I am inspiring someone else?

Keep organizing! Keep decluttering! Let’s get it done!

Coming up this week: a new texture tutorial. I’ve also got a long list of emailed questions that I want to cover, so please subscribe so you don’t miss out on anything.

My dear friend Maegan just wrote a beautiful post about living more simply, and it struck a chord with me. You see, I suffer from depression, it’s no big secret, and if you’ve known me for any time at all, you probably already know this about me. I’m not one to hide behind it or use it as an excuse. I just deal with things a lot differently than other people. It is what it is. The person most affected by it would have to be Ken, because I am 100% real around him – the good and the bad. But he hangs in there through it all, and without him, I would have never accepted it for what it is.

Having said that, I am affected most by my depression when things get out of control. For example, if the house becomes a mess, I can’t wrap my brain around what needs to be done, so I do nothing. Until one day, everything clicks and I clean clean clean until it’s done. I don’t know how to explain it – it just creates an overwhelming grip on me, and I can’t break out of it long enough to figure out what needs to be done.

Or if my desk was messy, I would just brush aside anything that needed to be done. Sometimes, that meant bills. It’s silly to forget to pay your bills, but when you suffer from something like this, it’s like you know they are there, but you can’t even fathom taking three minutes to pay them. Luckily, I’ve never let it get too far, and I’ve been able to keep things paid on time for a long time now. But that’s how I live.

And being the homemaker, I felt like it was my job to do everything around the house. I felt like I couldn’t ask Ken to help … until we had to pay late fees. I always felt so stupid, like I couldn’t even sit down and take care of something simple like paying the bills.

But I realized that if I was organized and if I kept things somewhat clean and clutter-free, things moved along much easier. If I organize the bills when they come in and then sit down every Monday morning and pay them, everything gets paid on time. Or if I set up a little schedule on what to do around the house each day, it stays clean.

This is where simplicity comes in. Clutter = me feeling overwhelmed. The more simple we live, the easier it is for me to function without feeling like I’m drowning. So this month is going to be a serious cleanup month in the Hoskins household. I’m going to be working through each room and getting rid of unnecessary clutter. I’m going to be organizing the garage and linen/coat closets so we have more room to store the clutter that we actually need.

Emma’s toys are going to get a major overhaul, and then we will be enforcing the “one in-one out rule” (1I1O) … anytime she brings one new toy in, one toy must be donated.

Same 1I1O rule goes for any items of clothing that are not necessary (i.e., underwear is a necessity, a new sweater is not).

It’s also time for me to start getting busy making Emma clothes with the huge fabric stash I have right now. I refuse to buy her new dresses when I have so many patterns for cute dresses/skirts and the ability to make them myself. I’m also going to work on making some really cool things for her that won’t cost as much as a new toy will.

Anyway, this is where it starts. Will I blog about everything? Probably not, but I’ll try to update when I can on what’s going on. Maybe take some pictures, too, if I’m brave enough to show you the messy befores. Yikes.

Baby step #1? I’ve kept the kitchen clean for 2 days. Yes, this is a big deal for me. Most of you will think that it’s easy to just unload the dishwasher in the morning and then load it all day, run it at night, and start all over the next day. But little things like that are things that I have to work really hard to do. 2010 is the year to make the positive changes that will hopefully lead to me doing things like that without even thinking twice.

I feel like 2010 is going to bring some big changes for me. And for us as a family.

I guess I could abbreviate it to “PO” because that’s what Ken was when he found out about the mistake I made. Not really … he doesn’t get upset about stuff like that. And for those wondering, it wasn’t a life-altering mistake or anything … we’re not going to lose our house or cars or anything, it just made things a little difficult in a stressful time. It’s all taken care of now, and life goes on.

When we took apart the hutch and moved it into the breakfast nook, I moved all of my cookbooks into it. But as me and my mom were moving them, I remembered a recent post I read on Organizing Junkie about donating cookbooks you don’t use. The idea was met with a little resistance among some women, but I am NOT attached to cookbooks. I have a few favorites, and I do tend to collect the old Southern church cookbooks since they have the BEST comfort food recipes, but I could easily do without a few of the other ones. In addition to my paper cookbooks, I also have a virtual cookbook on Delicious, as well – you can check it out if you want.

Anyway, I decided to try to consolidate my most-used recipes into one binder. Since this will be a binder I use often, I bought a pretty one on clearance from Target.

The first page is a print-out of my Google calendar menu plan for the current month.

Then, I have all of my recipes divided into the following sections: appetizers, beef, bread, breakfast, cakes, chicken, cookies, dessert, fish, pasta/rice, pork, salads, soups, veggies.

I used clear page protectors since cooking is messy.

Or maybe I’m the only messy cooker out there? ;)

I plan to |1| print all of my recipes that are stored online and then print them as I save them, and then |2| go through and type up the recipes from the 4×6 cards my mom made me when I moved out on my own, and then |3| go through my cookbooks and type up the recipes I want to keep so I can donate the books I don’t need anymore.

So this is potentially a HUGE project that I’m not going to finish today, but I’ve made a good dent in it.

My ultimate goal is to end up with a binder (or 2) of recipes that I actually use … so if I find a recipe, make it, and end up not liking it, it goes in the recycle bin.

Now it’s your turn … how do you organize your recipes?