Farming in the shade

This organizing takes forever! I did find some nice little cheap baskets (made in the USA, too!) that I could use in keeping stuff neat on the pullout drawers of the pantry. They were 2 for $1.69. On this shelf I took all the greeting cards out of their boxes and matched them up with envelopes and put them in one of the baskets (back, left). I separated them with divider tabs I cut down to size. I know it's not Martha-Stewart-worthy, but I'm cheap. Work with me here.  The baggies at the far right remind me of Grandma Myrtle, who, bless her heart, had a whole drawer full of them. I'm a baggie saver, too, but in moderation. Group like items together. Things that get used often (tape and stapler) are in front.  In this pullout drawer I used stack trays to separate lined paper from cardstock. Lots of room for printer paper behind the stack trays. And the pullout drawers make this possible. Have I told you I love this pantry? Here's the final shot of the pantry. I did splur...

Okay, I'm making progress. Today, I planned out 9 weeks of school for my son. I have purposely blurred the the computer screen so that you can't really see details about the week of October 27-31. And here is the bottom drawer of my office pantry. It now holds all my shipping envelopes, labels, bubble wrap, packing tape and business card stock. With room to spare. The organizing lady says to store things vertically as much as possible. So I found a couple of plastic magazine holders and laid them down on their backs.  I went on a hunting and gathering expedition tonight, to see if I could find something suitable for storing all the little stuff in the other drawers. I think I found something that might work (that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. More tomorrow...

It's gotta get worse before it gets better... No photos today.

Day One Update: I can now see the top of my desk. It is not perfectly clear, but I have filed and pitched an amazing amout of paper. I now have a small desk-top file with some often-used categories: farm bills to pay, personal bills to pay, to-do, pending, upcoming events, and a file for each of the children's important school information (such as grades and a transcript-in-process). I filed all our old tax information together in one storage box, threw out a couple years' worth (only keep 7!), and cancelled a credit card that had never even been activated. The credit card company tried like crazy to keep me as its victim, but I persisted. I even had the foresight to ask them to mail a letter confirming the closure of the account to me.  I sat through a 15-minute, high-speed phone interview on our medical histories (as we are changing health insurance yet again, due to soaring premiums). I threw away all the old cds and diskettes (yes, really!) for software we no longer use. I ...

Over the past month, I've been working to dejunk an upstairs room to make space for our homeschooling activities. I had a couple of organizer ladies come and make suggestions. We took many of their suggestions and implemented them. The kids and I spent the better part of Labor Day week sorting and sifting. I had to ask for help from several of my family members who have certain gifts. The end result is a lovely homeschooling room/library on the second floor of our house. I am EVER so grateful to the organizer ladies for starting me on this journey...

Today we started school. We raced through the basic things to be able to spend time organizing. The organizer ladies who came to help me with my mess (see earlier posts) suggested that we use our upstairs library (a.k.a. storage area for anything and everything) as a homeschool area. We spent quite a bit of time over the weekend purging and sorting. Today we worked hard, and were finally able to see the walls and floor. These bookshelves had to be emptied so that we could move them (and vaccum and mop, while we're at it). Here's a very small part of what needs to go back on them. The girls decided to number the piles so that we didn't get confused about what went where. Tomorrow we hope to put the rug back down, move a table up there and put the books back where they belong. Then I have a good day's work finishing organizing the homeschool closet. Yes, it looks neat now. But what you don't see is the card table still in the middle of the living room, with all the bi...

Work on our farm seems never to be done. But we try to do something different on holidays. Today we spent quite a bit of time in our upstairs "library", decluttering and getting it ready to be our new homeschool area. The "organizer ladies" took about a week to make a plan, and this was a large part of it. The living room will be a living room. The library will be where we homeschool. We got a lot done (though there is much more to do), and while the kids and I were working up there, The Farmer attended to some home repairs that have been neglected. After lunch, our oldest daughter came home for a short visit. It's S.'s birthday today, and it was nice to have the family all together for the birthday supper. When S. blew out the candles on her cake, I wondered what she wished for. Always, she has wished for a horse. Now that she has TWO, I can't imagine what she could come up with. Before supper, The Farmer and A. decided to ride. Here are A. and S. saddl...

Tonight I had two women in my house. They came at my invitation to help me organize my space. They asked questions. Like, "How often do you use this thing you have on the counter?" "What bothers you about this space?" "Do you actually read all these magazines?" They asked to see potential storage spaces in my house (a.k.a. the closets). Ack! When is the last time you let anyone see in your closets? They took pictures. And measured things. And asked more questions. As I walked through the house with them, seeing my house through their eyes, I felt vulnerable. I had to face up to some things. I can't remember the last time I rode the exercise bike that takes up a large corner of my office. I have no idea what is in some of those boxes in the library. And probably a quarter of my earthly possessions are things that have been given to me or to my children that I don't even really want. Stay tuned for part two later next week.

It's quiet in the house. Eerily quiet. My children are camping with my folks--a last fling before school starts. It's also my last chance for planning, purging and organizing. I've visited a couple of blogs of homeschooling moms with lovely before and after photos. I would like to do that too, but I'm stuck in the "before". A saddle in the middle of the room with a plastic bag and some bridles. A spinning wheel and some escaped wool. A perpetually busy refrigerator front. A shirt draped over a dining room chair. Six months of reading material, backed up like traffic during rush hour. A quilt gift balanced on a recliner, waiting to go with my oldest to college this Friday. This is the stuff of my life, and it's not really photo-worthy. I'd love to live in a peaceful, ordered environment. But I don't know where to start...