Wednesday, July 30, 2008

My First Blog





I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog, but since I occasionally (OK, so more than occasionally) lack follow-through, I'd about nixed the idea. I don't know that I'll keep up with this, but I enjoy reading other people's blogs so much, I decided to give it a go. I figure it's a good way to keep people up to date on pictures if nothing else! So, read if you'd like to or feel free to ignore this completely. Anyone who knows me well knows I can ramble and babble with the best of them, so consider that a warning.... :O)

For today's topic...well, today I'm struggling with a few things - where I want to go with home schooling the boy wonder, how I'm going to manage to go to school, take care of motorman and the boys, and not be so stressed out that I am a miserable wretch (making those around miserable as well...misery loving company is a well-known saying for a reason, folks), and what the heck are we going to do with this house.

I'll address the easiest question in today's blog - what the heck are we going to do with this house....We need new carpet, new paint, and LOTS of organizing. Now, I'll admit it, I'm not a neat freak, by any means. I know, I know - everyone is shocked by this revelation. I've accepted this. My husband has (grudgingly) accepted this as well. I'm not proud of it, but, it is what it is. My problem is that I'm becoming overwhelmed by all our STUFF. There's just so much of it. I have no idea how we accumulated all these things. Seriously, where does it all come from? We moved from a 1500 sf house in AZ to a 2300 sf house in TX. We got rid of a TON of stuff when we moved. And we managed to fill up 800 sf of space in probably less than a year. What happened??

The thing is, so much of it is just clutter. Garbage. It means nothing to us. It's not important, it serves no purpose. It's becoming a burden to me. There's so much to clean, repair, put away, pick up. It's too much responsibility. And since I'm not so great at doing the cleaning, repairing, put away-ing, and pick up-ing, I've decided I need to sort, organize, and get rid of a lot of this stuff. Hello, Free-cycle and Goodwill, here I come!!!

Unfortunately, my husband doesn't agree. He likes stuff. He even doesn't mind cleaning it all up. In fact, if it weren't for motorman, the house would never be clean. Yep, he works his ass off in the oilfield and cleans as well. He's a great guy, isn't he? So, I'm going to organize around his stuff. Let's face it, most of it's mine, boy wonder's, and bubby's. If he's the one cleaning it all up, then the least I can do is minimize what he has to clean, right? Yep, I'm a good wife like that.

My goal is to organize every room, every closet, drawer, box, cabinet and surface before the semester starts on August 25th. Motorman is somewhat skeptical of my goal, but, by golly, I'm getting it done. I've got boxes for Goodwill, boxes for the dump, boxes for my ex-sil to start her new life (another long, long post), and, if I feel up to it, boxes for a yard sale. Once all the organizing is done, it's painting and cleaning time. New flooring will have to wait until we can afford it (read, a long, long time in the future).

Since it looks like we'll be here for at least the next several years, I'd like to decorate the house to our liking. I want to actually plan the way our house looks, instead of just tossing in furniture and living with it. I'm going to pick color schemes, hang pictures, put up shelves. I may go so far as to pick themes. I even plan to give motorman back his room. Yep, when we moved in, we had enough space for him to have his own little den. And he had it all set up the way he wanted it, decorated the way he wanted. Then little by little, the rest of us took over and crowded him out. Poor guy, it was totally unfair. By Christmas, this is gonna be a whole new house.

So now that I've blogged about it, I'm gonna have to follow through. I need this to hold me accountable. And I need to get a good block of work done by the end of summer, because I'm guessing that A&P I is going to kick my rear next semester and keeping house will again be rudely shoved aside. ('Cause I've kept it all up so well the first ten weeks of summer, y'know??) And my mom's coming for Christmas, it'd be nice to have things a little more organized and prettied up for her visit.

So...my quest begins. Wish me luck, everyone, I'm gonna need it.