Happy New Year!

We stayed home and attempted to have a low-key night, but Emma had a friend sleep over, so it was not exactly quiet. But we still had a good time. I don’t put a lot of stock in New Year’s resolutions, but here’s what I’m up to so far in the New Year:

• I finished January’s menu. Tonight we’re going to have leftovers from last night. We want to take our first family trip to Disney in June, so planning to eat at home will save money. The only exception is next Sunday, when we take Emma to see Matilda,  her main Christmas gift. It’s also my birthday so we’ll revisit a favorite place from when we used to go to lots of shows. I moved my slow cooker days to Sunday and Monday because it’s easier to get something started on Sundays, but otherwise I kept it essentially the same. Having soup and sandwiches on Thursday has probably been the best choice I’m made from a planning perspective because it’s the day of week I’m most likely to not want to cook.
• With the exception of the tree and the Christmas village, all the holiday décor’s been put away. And it’s fit into two totes. This time I made a list of what’s in each tote, which wasn’t really needed but it makes me feel more organized.
  

  Decor, now fully organized

  Ornaments and lights won’t fill more than one tote and we keep the village buildings in their original boxes so I’m going to have an additional empty tote as I started out with four. I’m surprisingly excited about this.

• Mother Nature didn’t cooperate with our plan to go gangbusters in the garage. It wasn’t cold, so I can’t complain too much, but it was often rainy and we got our first dusting of snow and slush. But the weekend’s going to be sunny, so I’m hoping to spend a good part of one day in there. I’ve gotten rid of a lot, but there is still more to unearth so I need to be able to move things out if I’m going to purge any more.
• I signed up for two New Year’s decluttering challenges, which is a bit hyper-ambitious but I’m feeling impatient, and I think these will give me some much-needed direction. I’m following Peter Walsh’s #31Days2GetOrganized challenge, and today’s was super easy: designate a box or bag for donations, and put five things in it. I’ve already scheduled a donation pickup for the 7^th, and have a large box, a small box, a bag of clothes and a bag of stuffed animals ready to go. Lately I’ve been finding Apartment Therapy a great help, because looking at small, neat, attractive spaces motivates me. So I signed up for their January Cure too. Today’s task was to buy flowers (which I’ll do over the weekend, and am happy to do) and vacuum rugs and clean the floors (which I am less happy to do). Fortunately, Bob mopped the kitchen yesterday, and vacuumed the whole house yesterday. But the bathroom floors could use a good scrub, and the corner under my desk is often neglected. Even though Bob does a good job generally, I think many corners get neglected so I’m going to deal with all of them over the next three days, which have been allotted for the task.
• In addition to the bags and boxes, I decided to part with this magazine rack.
  

  Passing it on to someone else

  When I moved into my first apartment, almost twenty years ago, my childhood neighbors gave me a kitchen table and chairs, two table lamps, and this magazine rack. The rack is all that’s left. But it gets messy and overfilled. I’ve lost interest in magazines, because they become clutter and I find the internet is just as good a source of info. So I’ll be putting it out with the other things next week.

Yesterday I did a lot of miscellaneous cleaning, and found myself dealing with all the little things of childhood. Not little sentimental things, but literal little things. Keychains, funky erasers, tiny bottles of nail polish, a magnifying glass, to name a few things. The idea of these stupid little items going to a landfill made me feel guilty, so I put them in a bag and into a donation box, where someone is going to discover them and inevitably hate me.