Off the wagon

We were doing so well with our meal planning and getting motivated to do things in the evenings to get ourselves to a place where we're comfortable and happy in our space.  All that fell to the wayside when we all got sick and didn't have the energy to go do anything.  Making things even worse, The Hubby and I weren't sick at exactly the same time, which meant when one wasn't feeling well, we did nothing.  We haven't really touched the basement in a couple of weeks and need to have it fairly empty by December 4th, when we host our annual Christmas party (we have friends that will sleep down there and we might hang out down there once the kiddo is sleeping).  Nothing like a deadline to whip us into shape, eh?

Maybe....

Of course, then my tooth extraction happened.  And now we're both having to do evening work to make up for time we're spending with Baby Girl during the day because we don't have a sitter today and tomorrow.  So it doesn't look like it's going to happen before Thanksgiving and we're just going to have to be okay with that. 

Meal planning for the week is just eating whatever is left from last week that we didn't have because I either didn't feel like cooking or didn't feel like eating.  I'm still experiencing some soreness on one side of my mouth, so who knows how dinner tonight will go down. 

We'll get back on the wagon...someday.  But for now, we're just going to be a little less organized and a little more chaotic.  And we have to be okay with that.

Our grand plan

We have a plan, The Hubby and I.  A plan to simplify.  A plan to organize.  A plan to de-stress. 

We've had plans before and then something would happen.  The baby.  Him working late.  Someone dying.  An unexpected visitor.  Illness. 

This is our plan, for better or for worse.  On Saturdays (or on Sunday mornings) we're making a meal plan and a grocery list.  I go to the grocery every Sunday morning, so this works out well. 

Sunday evening is when the excitement happens, though!  Sunday evening we're planning out the week ahead.  We're looking at The Hubby's work schedule to figure out when he needs to work a bit late.  Based off of that, we decide who is doing pick-up and drop-off at daycare and then which dinner we'll have which night.

We've also decided that we want to work some activities into our nights.  We want to start working out a bit more.  We want to spend more quality time together.  So we're picking 2 nights to work out (and then will try to do some active stuff over the weekend).  Then we're picking two other nights to spend doing some more fun things.  We've made a list of six fun things we'd do and we roll a die twice--once for each night.  The number on the die corresponds to one of the fun activities.

For instance, Tuesday night we went through videos (The Hubby) and photos (me), worked on downloading, editing, and organizing them.  It's something we both like to do and need to do.  Then tonight or tomorrow (I forget which night is our workout night) we're going to put together a puzzle. 

This is all a structured way to eliminate the evenings that were filled with me sitting in the recliner with the laptop, watching TV and surfing, and The Hubby sitting on the couch watching TV and snoring.  We're hoping it will encourage us to interact more and really make the most of the limited time we have together after Baby Girl goes to bed. 

There will still be TV-watching, of course.  Last night, for instance, we watched The Biggest Loser in the basement while we worked on organizing stuff from the craft room.  Being productive, talking to each other, and watching TV all at once--love it!

I hope we can keep it up.  So far, it's felt so nice knowing what's going to happen each day and not going to bed feeling like the evening was wasted.

Simplification, for real

I think I've spoken here about our need to simplify our lives. We've said it time and time again, but this is amplified by the existence of our lovely daughter. We want to be able to spend as much time with her as possible, not wading through paperwork, doing hours of dishes (because we hadn't done any in awhile), searching for things (because we have too much)... So we're on a mission and we're actually getting somewhere with it (finally).

We've made lists. Lists of things that need to be done to get our house to a place where we can breathe. Things like clean out closets, reorganize cupboards, figure out a system to deal with papers and coupons and then DO IT, cleaning out that huge pile of stuff that's accumulated behind the love seat... We've also got lists of things that will need to be done daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, and semi-annually. We've started to figure out WHEN it's all going to get done. We've got a calendar. We're writing down committments outside the home that we each have. We're writing down our dinners for each night (we've always meal planned, but now we're assigning meals to a night so we can't say nothing sounds good). We're writing down which of the items on that first list are getting done that evening.

So far, so good. We started on Monday evening. We cleaned off the end tables and pared down what was there. One night DH scrubbed the sink. When I got home from the grocery, I cleaned out the refrigerator. One evening I scrubbed the stovetop. One evening I put away baby girls's wardrobe and cleaned up her room. Tuesday we were home on a snow day (which was SO great!) and we ended up cleaning up a lot of the 2nd floor. Our closet is emptier (thanks to three boxes of clothes we're donating), the floor is cleaner, and we're a lot more relaxed in our bedroom.

One task from that day, though, made me more emotional than I ever thought it would have...putting away maternity clothes. I loved being pregnant. I would love to be pregnant again...if there weren't a baby at the end. I love baby girl, but I am SO not ready to have another baby. But I am ready to be pregnant again. Yes, I was self-conscious about the way my flabby belly looked. But I loved being that close to my little girl, twenty-four hours a day. So I cried when I put away those clothes (and packed away those that I had borrowed). I miss my days of my little girl inside me (and not fighting me when I try to get her to go to sleep).

Where was I (as I wipe a tear from my eye again)? Ah yes, simplification.

This weekend we're due to: clean out the oven, get rid of the stuff behind the love seat, figure out a coupon organization system (I'm a person who keeps all inserts, collects many other coupons, sometimes buys additional inserts...I'm a couponing maniac. I used to have a binder with all my coupons sorted by type put into baseball card inserts, but that is too much maintenance for me now. So I have a plan now that I'm going to try), deal with the stacks of paperwork and figure out how we're going to deal with them in the future, clean out the food cupboards, and also clean, purge, and sort the cookware cupboards. That may sound like a lot, but I think it should still be a fairly relaxing weekend.

I'll try to keep updated here all the things we've done to get our house simplified. The only negative side effect to this is that we're missing out on many TV shows. We don't turn the TV on during weeknight evenings while the baby is awake, typically, so we get about 1 1/2 to 2 hours to watch TV each evening and now we're cleaning during it. But that's okay. Even without the TV, I'm seeing that we're both a lot happier and more relaxed with a cleaner, emptier house.