Yes, I know it’s Mother’s Day, and I should be relaxing and basking in the glow of having my family cater to me.  And they made me a delicious breakfast and let me lounge in bed this morning, so now I can work on a little project.

I’ve been contemplating making a homemaking notebook.  I’ve seen many websites and message boards discussing how great homemaking notebooks are.  I’ve tried to make one in the past, but I got so bogged down in the process of making the notebook that I didn’t really use the notebook.

My biggest issue at the moment is the actual cleaning.  I have been just dealing with each mess as I get to it, and that is obviously not working.  I get overwhelmed very easily.  I need to make things simple so that the cleaning actually gets done.

I’ve decided to give each day a focus–only one or two main chores so that I don’t overwhelm myself with a long to do list.   Here’s what I have so far:

• Monday: Clean the bathrooms / dust and vacuum
• Tuesday: Clean the kitchen
• Wednesday: Wash and change all bedding / dust and vacuum
• Thursday: Laundry catch up day
• Friday: Clean bathrooms / dust and vacuum
• Saturday: Clean out the fridge / all trash taken out and clean trash cans (this is also grocery and dump day)

I’ll try and get to laundry daily, but I figure scheduling a catch up day will ensure that it actually gets done.  I’m going to try this for a week and see how it goes.  I figure vacuuming needs to happen every other day since the dog sheds so much, and the bathrooms have to get cleaned at least twice a week due to little boys with bad aim.  I’m thinking of it as an experiment…or baby steps to a more organized home.

I started out the year with big ideas about how I was going to simplify.  Those big ideas were quickly smothered by all our clutter.  We have a lot of stuff.  And by a lot, I mean A LOT.  Granted, we’re a family of 6 living in a 1700ish sf,  3 bedroom house.  You would think we’d be able to streamline, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Take, for instance, the toys.  I’m all about the kids having fun things to play with, but how much is too much?   I’ve trying to set up systems, where each kind of toy has it’s own bin, but then everything gets dumped and mixed up and nothing ever gets put back into it’s proper bin.  We have dinosaur bins, wedgit bins, car bins, littlest pet shop bins, polly pocket bins, I could go on and on.  That’s not counting the bakugan balls and cards all over the house, and all the baby toys that Cutie likes to strew around the room.  And this is just the toys people!

If I had my way, I think I’d cut our stuff at least in half.  I’d purge the toys and save only the things the kids actually play with and love.  I’d cut the clothing in half.  How much clothing does a person need?  Our closets and drawers  are so full it’s ridiculous.  And we probably only wear 1/3 of it.

One of my favorite books to browse is Material World: A Global Family Portrait.  I am always fascinated by how other people live.  It’s amazing to me too see how little other people own.   If I had to drag all our belongings outside and have a picture taken…I think I’d be embarrassed.   Not to mention the time it would take to actually get all our belongings out on the lawn.

I think a good start will be to just go room by room and start purging.  Maybe if I blog about it, I’ll be more motivated to keep it up.  I guess it’s time for some spring cleaning.

I said that my theme for the year was simplicity.  And do you think I’ve done a single thing to work towards that goal?  Not at all.  Unless you count that I thought about it.  I’m really good at planning things, but not so great at the follow through.  

So today, I decided to just do something.  So, I cleaned out and re-organized the under sink cabinet in my downstairs bathroom.  This cabinet was so out of control, that I couldn’t even bring myself to take a before picture.  It was always overflowing with hand towels, make-up, hair accessories…I knew it was bad when I couldn’t find the curling iron to do Annie’s hair before the play.  It literally took me 30 min. to find it–it was buried under the clutter. {blush}.

So, this afternoon, I sat myself down with a trash bag and plunged in.  Amazingly enough just 15 minutes later and I was done.  Why do I put off these tasks, when they are so quick to finish?  Why do I convince myself that it’s going to take too long??  

So, here is my baby-step to a clutter-free, more simple life.  I present to you, my clean, tidy, uncluttered under-sink cabinet.  

Just look at all that space! Who knew?!

I have spent the past year struggling through reading lessons with Dinoboy.  We’ve tried many different programs, from 100EZ Lessons, to Starfall, to Explode the Code, to Sonlight, to Little Stories for Little Folks.  It just wasn’t clicking for him.  We took the month of Dec. off for vacation, and I didn’t make him read hardly at all.  

All this week, all we’ve done for reading is he reads to me from The Cat in the Hat, and then he copies 2 lines from the book for copywork.  That’s it.  Not only is it just about stress free, he seems to suddenly be doing so much better!  We’ve just about finished the book, and I’ve seen a huge improvement.  I don’t know if it’s just that it suddenly clicked for him, or that my low-stress-snuggle-on-the-couch approach is what he needed all along, but either way, it’s working!  

It’s like that with so many things, isn’t it?  There’s so many different curriculum’s out there that scream to you that they’re the best, or that they’ll revolutionize your homeschool.  And it’s easy to get sucked into that.  I can testify that we have lots of programs just collecting dust on my shelves because they just didn’t work for us.  Sometimes all you need is a good book and someone to cuddle with.

Many of the ladies at the 4Real forums like to choose a word for the year, rather than make resolutions. This idea greatly appeals to me, but I had to ponder quite a while over what my word should be.  What keeps jumping out at me, however, is that with 6 people living in our rather small house, and the fact that the constant clutter is giving me headaches, I really need to spend some time simplifying.  And so, my word for the year is going to by Simplify.  

So what will this mean?  I’m going to of course fit in some books to read about simplifying.  Specifically,  Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne.  I’ll probably also read Confessions of an Organized Homemaker and Confessions of a Happily Organized Family because they are both sitting on my bookshelves already. 

I’m going to focus this year on decluttering our home, and hopefully find some way to keep it that way.  I’m married to a pack rat, which makes it hard to get rid of things, but I’m going to make an effort to get rid of at least a 1/4 of the “things” in our house.   My new motto is going to be–If we don’t love it, and we don’t use it, then we don’t need it!

I also want to work towards a “Less is More” education for my children.  It’s hard to not want to fit it all in, and fill in all the gaps!  But who doesn’t have gaps in their education?   I’d rather work on focusing on one subject, and really go deep and live within it for a few weeks rather than touch on it briefly a few times over the course of the year while trying to cram in as much content as possible.   

I’ll be checking in on how things are going with my Year of Simplicity.  If you’d like to join me, let me know in the comments.  Maybe we can keep each other accountable!