More to Goodwill

Well I am actually making some progress on decluttering our house. It is a teeny bit of progress, but better than nothing. I dropped off two boxes of toys and 3 bags of clothes today, and felt a bit better getting them out of my hallway and bedroom.

I am doing spring cleaning this week, but not at the lightening quick pace I had envisioned for myself. I hadn't realized how tired I was after teaching full-time this past quarter, being pregnant, giving our children and my husband love and attention, and still trying to keep all the balls juggling around the household. I dropped a ball and got caught with a late payment due to the old due date shuffle by our credit card company, and had to call today to sweetly ask for my old interest rate (8.25%) as opposed to their punitive 19.99% rate which they slapped on me (which they gave to me without any hassle...it pays to have good credit and be a longtime customer). At least I caught it right away, but I'm irritated that I let it happen. I can't wait to pay that sucker off! Not for a while yet, though. But we did pay off another credit card, so I allowed myself a mini-happy dance for that. Our debt snowball calculator tells me that we will be out of debt in...five years. Da-da-da-dum. Sucky, but it is EVERYTHING except our mortgage--the HELOC, my student loan, everything. I guess that is not too bad.

We are supposed to have some folks over for a visit on Saturday afternoon, but now it's looking like we might head over to the city to meet them somewhere instead. I am a bit relieved, frankly, because I am not sure I am going to have the house "company ready" by my standards before Saturday. I am just digging out here and re-establishing some semblance of house cleanliness and tidying, and the whole decluttering thing is a bit messy in its own way. You know the routine--you have to make a mess by sorting stuff before you can reorganize and get rid of the stuff you don't need.

Today I did get our son's room cleaned and reorganized. I took out all the baby toys which he has outgrown, things which are more for toddlers than little boys. And I put all of his favorite toys into his toy cubbies, where they are in plain view but everything has a place. I started doing the same in our daughter's room, but I ran out of time to get it finished. I have to get her buy-in about some of the organizing, because if she's not on board, then it's a waste of my time. Hopefully she will connect the dots about finding her toys more easily, because she is starting to realize that knowing where something actually is makes it a lot easier to play with it.

I am still catching my own bad habits and trying to correct them before they are permanently imparted to the kids. I tend to leave coats and shoes lying around, and so I can't get irritated when they do the same thing. And I am making a habit of just doing something if I see it. Case in point: our kids' ball pit. Half the time the balls are strewn around our den. Whenever I walk through there now, I toss a few balls into the ball pit. Eventually they are all back in there and the room is that tiny bit neater. It's really not that much energy and I feel good about doing just a little every time I see it. I am just trying to transfer that philosophy to the rest of the house!! Hopefully we will get ourselves back onto a tight meal plan and budget and get our house (and ourselves!) ready for this new little one in the summertime. One step at a time...