Kickstart to Clutter Free - Day 5

January 19, 2016

You may have noticed that I am taking my time on this Kickstart to Clutter Free eCourse. The duration of the course is 14 days, but there are no rules saying you have to complete the course in fourteen consecutive days.

So, what are we tackling on Day 5? The kitchen cupboards...

At first glance, I was thinking (and you might be thinking), "Hmm, the cupboards aren't too bad." But once I started getting into the one set of cupboards next to my oven, I knew I was in trouble.

I pulled everything out, shelf by shelf, and was so surprised when I found items with dates like this:

Yes, you are seeing that correctly. An unopened box of graham crackers with a best used date of August 2014!!

One thing I am remembering during this course, I am not the only one who lives in this house. But I have to take some responsibility for the things that come into my house. I do 99% of the grocery shopping. Which means I should be checking the refrigerator and cupboards before I go shopping. Yes, I did throw away opened boxes of things. You know the ones with just a few crumbs at the bottom that nobody ever finishes (still can't figure out why this happens!)

But with better planning on my part, I can avoid dumping this much stuff from my cupboard:

And needless to say, I was able to clear out more than 25 items from my cupboards. After doing a bit of moving some things around, the cupboard next to my oven now looks like this:

There is actually empty space now!

Since going through this one set of cupboards took a bit of time, I may tackle the baking and spice cupboards on another day. But next up will be the kitchen drawers...

Be sure to check into Kathi's Kickstart to Clutter Free eCourse if you are wanting to tackle your clutter for good!

My Week of Photos

January 13, 2016

One of my goals this year is to pick up my DSLR and use it every single day. To help me along the way, I will mainly be using the daily photo prompts from Capture Your 365. But every now and then, I might use another photo challenge list or get a little creative on my own.

This week, I pretty much stuck with the list from Capture Your 365 except for one (and I will let you know which one that was). So here is my week of photos to share with you:

Day 6 - Pushing Myself: I fell out of my routine of walking at least three times a week during the holidays, but our January winter weather is not cooperating. Well, to be honest, we really do need the rain here in California. So I guess I will just keep a better eye on the weather and schedule my walks on days when I know it shouldn't rain.

Day 7 - Good For Me: I have been using the MapMyWalk app for some time now to record my weekly walking activity. I love being able to see the progress I have made.

f/2.0, 1/160 sec, ISO 800 with 50mm lens

Day 8 - Where I Stand: On these cold winter afternoons, I like to treat myself to a hot homemade drink, with whipped cream of course. After all, those calories that I burn on my walks have to be made up somewhere.

f/2.5, 1/125 sec, ISO 800 with 50mm lens

Day 9 - A Relationship: I am getting ready to work on two big quilting projects, so I needed to do some calculations and some test blocks. A quilting ruler and a rotary cutter are the perfect match for a quilting project.

Day 10 - Monochrome: a monochrome photo is one that can either be black and white or one in varying tones of one color. Since we had homemade waffles for breakfast on Sunday morning, I thought they would be the perfect subject for this prompt.

f/2.5, 1/1600 sec, ISO 100 with 50mm lens

Day 11 - Complimentary: since it wasn't raining on this day, I found a couple of complimentary colors in my home and took them in the backyard to use the natural daylight. Looks like I didn't quite focus on my subject very well. That is why we practice, right?

f/5.6, 1/50 sec, ISO 100 with a x2 macro lens

Day 12: the prompt for today was draw. Since I couldn't think of anything to capture using this prompt, I decided to try out one of my new macro lenses. These lenses screw into my existing 18-55mm lens. I am looking forward to experimenting with these more this year.

So that is my first full week of photos using the Capture Your 365 photo prompts!

Are you participating in the photo challenge? Be sure to share a link to where you are posting your photos. I would love to see how you capture these same daily prompts!

Kickstart to Clutter Free - Day 4 and a book giveaway!

January 12, 2016

My 'home office' is more like a desk that I use to 'collect' items to be put away at another time. You know the place, the one where you say, "I'll just put it here 'for now' and put it away later." After lots of 'I'll just put it here for now', this is what my desk looks like:

And here is the funny part...today's challenge was to remove 50 pieces of clutter from your home office. Want to see what my desk looked like after removing 50 pieces of clutter?

You might be saying, "Well, that looks better." But I only cleared away about half of what was on my desk!! I really need a better system of handling all of this paperwork...

So, because I didn't want to leave this area half done, I continued on until...

YES!! Ah, NOW it looks so much better! I stopped keeping track of how much I cleared from my desk. It is kind of embarrassing that there were more than 50 items on my desk that needed to be somewhere else.

But fortunate for my readers, I did find a few items I have acquired which I have duplicates of. So I will be doing a few giveaways!

First up, a brand new copy of Hope Rising by Dr. Scott Todd. Just post a comment below and I will draw a winner on Monday, January 18th (giveaway limited to residents of the United States).

And if you are wanting to participate in this Kickstart to Clutter Free Challenge? You really need to purchase Kathi's eCourse. She is such a great motivator to helping you along this journey. I hope you consider it!

Compassion Share & Tell

January 8, 2016

A while back, here on my blog, I started sharing monthly what I was mailing to my Compassion kids. Then life just started getting a bit busy, and my little ole blog here was sorely neglected.

So, here is to a new year and a new start to my Compassion Share & Tell posts!

This month, since I have been going through Kathi's Kickstart to Clutter Free eCourse, I found I have quite a few (okay, a lot!) of the stationary we receive from Compassion when they send us a letter from one of our kids. Rather than throw them all in the recycle bin, I want to make good use of this resource that Compassion has invested in and mailed to us.

Here is what I mailed to my kids this month:

a simple letter answering some of their most recent questions
the most recent photo of our family
nativity stickers I found half off after Christmas

This year, I want to do a better job of responding to letters as I receive them. Then sending a more generic letter with stickers and other things I find which meet the mailing guidelines once a month.

Have you mailed a letter to your Compassion child this month? I would love to hear what you are mailing to them!

Kickstart to Clutter Free - Day 3

January 7, 2016

Today's area from Kathi's eCourse is one that I usually don't have too much trouble keeping clutter free. The kitchen counter top...

But then again, on this particular day, I was able to find homes for 19 things that really don't need to live on my counter.

Once I put each of these items away (and a few items ended up in the giveaway box), I cleared the remaining items off the counter and cleaned all the surfaces.

This is another before picture, but I wanted to show this to point out one thing. See the bananas hanging? Years ago, we put a large cup hook under the counter to keep the bananas off the counter. Honestly, I believe it helps keep the bananas from getting too ripe too quickly. Every now and then, we have a stray banana that doesn't like to stay with the group. Today, I gave that stray banana a new home...

...in the freezer! This will be a great way to have ripe bananas on hand for smoothies or banana bread, yum!

So what did the counter look like once I was done with this challenge?

Ah! And this took me no more than 15 minutes to acheive!

Now some people might ask why my KitchenAide mixer is still on my counter? I use that thing every single week, and I really don't have the cabinet space to store it. Plus, I don't know if you have ever lifted one of those things, but they are heavy! I would rather have it on my counter and use it, than continually have to lift it out of a counter which might prevent me from using it as often.