I’m avoiding the baskets of junk. Even though I had time last weekend, I couldn’t bring myself to start digging in. Fortunately, there are always other things to do!

• My paper system was working nicely. I regret that I never took photos of it, for it is no more. I had a tray for current papers, a shoe box for Girl Scout related papers and a shoe box for receipts. Down the line I was going to do something fancy to the boxes to make them look nice, but Emma asked if she could have them to make a house for her Shopkins. Since the result was having papers all over again, I spent most of today sorting, shredding and recycling, and getting our tax papers ready for the accountant. This is my replacement solution: 

The folders are in the purple bin, the tray is for papers I need to sort, and the binder has my current and old menus, routines and cleaning checklists, and fun things like lists of books I want to read.

• I made February’s menu, trying to be a little more specific on taco nights and salad nights. I was a little late getting it done so I missed the first couple days. Recently I discovered Emily Bites which has a lot of great recipes, though I only worked in one this month.
• A few weeks ago I started watching White Collar on Netflix. The main character lives in a great apartment with nicely organized bookshelves, which led me to conclude that my own needed reorganizing. I tried to group books a little more by author, series and genre- it’s still loosely organized but better than before. It was a slightly spontaneous- I came home from work Wednesday with a couple hours free and didn’t think it would take long. I guess I blocked out how long it took in the past because I didn’t finish till today, and only because we had a snow day. But on the plus side, I got rid of more books. My goal was 20, and I stopped counting when I reached it, but I estimate I got rid of about 50 which I will drop off this week. Many were books Emma outgrew. Since I’ve been going through my books more regularly, I’ve monitored the books I didn’t read or didn’t finish, and decided most of them would never be read, so I added them to the donation box. My photos of the book wall were blurry so I only have an after, but there’s an older photo here.
  

  Wall of books- after

  These are just some of the shelves, so you can’t really see the difference that getting rid of books has made.

  

  Freestanding shelves- before

  

  Freestanding shelves- after.