Organizing & Weight Watching

So, things are really going well in the organizational department. I have completely cleared out my dresser so that only clothes I actually wear are in there now, not clothes I had fond memories of, not clothes that are ripped or stained but "have some wear left in them". Those are gone. I have a big stack for Goodwill, but am waiting for Michael to add to it when he goes through his clothes tonight.

I also cleaned out the two jewelry drawers on top of the dresser. I don't actually own any decent jewelry apart from my engagement and wedding rings, so the drawers became junk drawers. I was very happy to find my grandma's double decker bus charm that I brought her back from my trip to London in 1991. I am going to take it to a jeweler and have it put on my charm bracelet so I don't keep fretting about it. It is one of my most prized possessions. Cleaning out these drawers was Leah's favorite job, since she got to play with a lot of "stuff" while I was sorting. I think she will be a child who is very fond of jewelry. The few pieces of junk jewelry I had really caught her eye.

The big thing is that I've finished going through my bookshelves. I got rid of nearly 200 books, approximately 40 of which have found new homes all around the country. This was a huge step for me, as I said before. You can see from the picture that when I cleaned out the downstairs shelves, it made quite a mess. But it's done and my books are going to happy new homes. I got a lead on a used book store here in town that I did not know about (Thanks, Wendy!) and I will probably take some books over there after giving it a little bit of time on PBS and see if I can get some money for them.

I am really looking forward to getting our tax return this year, I've decided that in addition to the other projects I want to work on, I am going to put a big shed out back, probably double the size of the one we have falling down out there now. Then I'm going to move a bunch of stuff from the downstairs closets out to the shed. That will free up closet space for our exchange student, provided we get confirmation that she is coming, and I'll beable to clean house in there for sure and get rid of tons of things.

More immediately, however, I'll be focusing on the "junk drawers" in the kitchen and living room cabinets. I would also like to move some furniture around and make room for some family items in my hope chest. Getting rid of the Diana stuff is a good step to doing that. The hope chest has to come upstairs into our room before Caroline arrives.

I feel pretty confident that we're going to have a great yard sale this spring, and I'm looking at doing it in May. So if anyone wants to get in on the action, let's pick a date and start planning it! Well, I guess there's not much planning involved, actually. :-) But we'll get it done for sure. I didn't have much to sell when I had the adoption fundraiser and managed to make $300, and now I have a ton to sell, so I'm optimistic.

The house remains very clean indeed, the FLYLady is working out just great. I feel like a better person, which seems silly to me, but I just feel like I'm getting my job done with the house looking so good. I've tweaked the sysem to fit me and am further tweaking it a bit, but boy, what a difference!!! The biggest difference is that I don't procrastinate any more, things get done right away and then I don't have to worry about it or stew about it. I love that. My stress levels are way down.

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Saturday marked my triumphant return to Weight Watchers. It felt great to go in and my old leader welcomed me with, "Welcome back, Susan, it's so good to see you!" I was impressed she remembered my name and everything :-) I was not too happy about the weigh-in, in about 6 months I managed to gain back 26 pounds, but frankly, with how stressful everything has been since last June, I'm kind of impressed it was only that much. Still, you have to work hard to gain that much weight in a relatively short amount of time and I know I'll have to work hard to lose it. So far, despite the odds this week, I've done OK. I fired up my new Wii Fit plus and have done 20-30 minutes of exercise nightly. We went out to dinner Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights, but according to Wii Fit, I am still down 2 pounds, so I was pleased wtih that. I'm hoping for a good weigh in.

One of the great things that WW has added is an app for the iPod/iPhone. I am now able to track points easily from the kitchen. I used to hate running downstairs and firing up the browser to put my points in, and forget using a paper tracker, I have ZERO patience. But now I can just tap, tap, and my points are in! It's awesome.

I'm looking forward to my Saturday weigh in.