Goals

The following is the text of the first e-mail I sent out prior to starting this blog:

I have decided now is the time to get the ball rolling toward a more organized life. So here is my present goal I'm going to try to send out an e-mail once a week of goals for us as well as suggestions and things that I am finding helpful for the coming week. Over the last few months becoming organized has become a bit of an obsession of mine so I'll be drawing on a few different books for the things I'll be passing along the first is Sidetracked Home executives by Pam Young and Peggy Jones (a book on putting a system in place for cleaning your house), second is Shed your stuff change your life by Julie Morgenstern (book on de cluttering your life in every way possible), and last is a planner that is suppose to help you organize your life in a year it's called Organize now a week by week guide to simplify your space and life by Jennifer Ford Berry. That all being said I am no expert and hope you will both share with me things that worked or didn't work for you. I find I better know what to do if I not only say this didn't work for me and this is why...it just helps me think about what will work for me.

Organizing isn't easy, cleaning isn't easy. So at least for me I need an end goal in mind, I need to know that what I'm working toward is worth it and I need a reminder when I get up in the morning and go ugh I don't want to do this today that I need to do this. I hope that makes sense. So this week my goals are centered around that, most of this is coming from the Shed book and I hope it will make sense.

Sit down in a quite space away from all the kids (hard I know that why I'm giving us a week) really think about what is wrong with your house. Think about how you want your house to look or run. What are the things that are working well in your home, the things you don't want to mess with. What are the things that are not working in your home? Visualize the life you want to live and the way you want your home to run. Now realize that getting there is not going to happen tomorrow but that one step at a time we can get closer to that. Now I want you to take a min to write down all that someplace that is important to you, your journal, an e-mail a sticky note on your computer, last page in your planner....what ever works for you but write it down so that you can look at it when you need to see what your working toward.

In the S.H.E. book they suggest making your list of excuses things that are getting in your way of getting your house clean so that may be helpful to you I'm not sure. It was not helpful for me when I tried it a few months ago. I found I needed to focus on the more positive side of things otherwise I started thinking I don't have enough time I'm taking time away from my kids etc. and that really wasn't helpful to me. So instead I've outlined above the rough I'm planning on going instead with is my take on some things from the SHed book and my personality. The point of making the list I think was suppose to show you that the only thing really standing in your way of doing these things is you. You need to make getting organized and for me that included de cluttering and cleaning my house a priority. It's not about having the time it's about making the time for the life you want to have and understanding you can only get there one step at a time.

So at least for me this is more of a life change so I'm taking it as such. I need to not be over welled by my home so I can enjoy my children and my life more fully. De cluttering and cleaning are only short term fixes I need to put in place a system that will help my family get to that point.

These are just my thoughts for today I wanted to start slow because with school starting in a few weeks I don't want to have to much to fast. So your job is to think about this and figure out what works for you to get your overall house hold goals set. Record those goals in some fashion. Report back on how that worked for you by next Friday.