{T.I.L. #15}

I've been sick as a dog this weekend and I'm not really looking forward to another work week to be honest. I've also struggled with technology so much lately that I'm ready to toss all this digital crap and go back to the days of candlelight (another post coming!) and paper & pencil (you guessed it...another TIL post!)

So another weekend gone, another round-up of Things-I-Love-that-don't-deserve-their-own-post.

This stuff from Trader Joe's is AMAZE.  

I heard all the hype around it and thought, 'gee. It's like peanut butter or something but tastes like cookies. It can't be THAT great.' Well, it is pretty darn good. I'm at-risk for spooning it out and eating it directly from the jar, so I insist on eating only one spoonful at a time with a crunchy Honeycrisp apple. They have crunchy and cocoa swirl which I have yet to try. And I hear that there is cookie butter ice cream too. Mmmm.

This is sort of a given. I mean, who doesn't really like twinkle lights? I once had a conversation with a member of a favorite local band who insisted I was the only one who called them this. He said you are supposed to call them 'christmas lights'. Uh, noooo, year-round lights can't be called Christmas lights, in my humble opinion. I really like twinkle lights in a backyard or outside like when I was at Cottonwood in Houston:

I also really love dainty twinkle lights like these at Restoration Hardware. I liked them after reading a blogger who used them in her front yard, and then my friend Ashley bought them this past month and I love them even more in person!

I want to use them around my headboard if possible (or at least somewhere in my bedroom) for an effect like this:

Photo from RH website

I also really like to write to-do lists and make schedules for myself and then promptly not follow them. I guess it feels good to have a plan but I struggle with the implementation part. But dang, if they were giving out awards for best list-writer, I'd surely win!

I like how Elise writes hers out each year and then each month in sharpie to highlight them or check them off as she completes each task:

From her blog

From her Instagram with #makeitpublicmakeithappen

I may try this but for a weekly system to see how I do.  I also like the way Clean Mama sets up her cleaning schedule with one major task per day. 

Again, gotta follow through for a schedule to work. But I'm halfway there, right?

The Before & After & After Again

Remember the time my school workroom was all messy? 

And then, after one very long Saturday before school started, it wasn't?

Yeah, me too. And then this happened the week before school started (and had things added to the pile over the first semester):

My Poor shelf! It's CRAM-packed!

 It has stayed this way for a while because as you know, when life happens, who has time to clean out a random workroom you barely use (or would you if it was clean and organized?)

This past weekend, I went up to the school with the express purpose of making it 'eat-off-the-floor-or-do-a-ballet-recital-in-it' clean. I wasn't sure how long it would take, but after 4 hours and LOTS of heavy lifting, it now looks like this:

My trick with any de-cluttering {because, let's be honest, it is loathsome} is to start on one side and work left to right around the room. So basically, control my ADD urge to bounce all over the place. If I go from one side to the other, moving items to their rightful place or getting rid of things, I have a starting/stopping point where I pick back up each time. For some reason, this works for me psychologically. Oh, and a Venti Starbucks no-water chai helps with the motivation. 

Let's hope it stays this way for a while. Which, in teacher land, means for the next week or so.

I liked the cleanliness so much I decided to set up a (rough) Keurig station:

I wasn't kidding when I said I want to be able to relax in there. Maybe I should add a yoga mat or a napping couch?

Got any genius de-cluttering tricks that you use?

Princess & the Pile: Holy Hoarding!

I've been a teacher going on 13 years this fall. I have accrued a TON of stuff...some by my own pocketbook, some from retired teachers, plenty o' stuff from trash bins or giveaway piles, etc. Well, I realized that I am in desperate need of reducing the clutter in my life--not just at home, but at my school as well. I honestly can't find some of the things I need because of it and that frustration has finally hit enough nerves for me to do something about it.

Just a glimpse into my team workroom--mostly my stuff crammed in there!! {minus the recycling bins}

Sometimes hoarding is emotional (as in most of the reason I keep things), but a lot of pack rat mentality is simply due to accumulating stuff faster than the rate of donating. Or in my case, the non-existent rate of donating. I always say 'I'll go through it later' but 'later' is a time period that exists in the world of fairies for me. This past month, however, I helped my sister reach her 'later' in her guest room and the transformation was AMAZING. And surprisingly, she did all of it in like 4 hours {with me as her cheerleader...look, I helped, okay?!} We laughed at how long she put it off and how quickly we saw results.

I went home from this event with excitement and anticipation. Yes! I was going to tackle all the clutter in my house {piles from moving, teaching, crafting, etc.} and it was going to be awesome...until I got home. The wall of crap won and I skeetered away with my tail between my legs.

That is, until my principal said she was opening the building yesterday. I decided once and for all that I would clean up SOME kind of clutter in my life and the school stuff seemed less daunting. Mind you, I've been wanting to do this for YEARS. Years, people. And sadly, this was just my team workroom. I have so much more than this to go through, but it seemed like a bite-sized challenge. Thankfully, two of my teamies helped me and 4 hours later...here are the results (I love a good before and after side-by-side, don't you?):

So, if THIS monstrosity of crap is less daunting, can you imagine how much clutter is in the rest of my life?? I will keep you updated on those projects when I muster up enough energy to tackle them. Although this accumulation is embarrassing, I wanted to post it because I feel that there a lot of people out there like me. It's not that I WANT to have a bunch of stuff, it's just that I'm too tired to keep up with the swarm of materialism in life. I mean, look at all the stuff we had to unpack from the workroom:

(this is just for ONE year, one grade level. And we wonder where all the money goes in education...textbooks & workbooks are the devil!)

I've learned from this lady that the numero uno rule in de-cluttering your life is REFUSE. This is hard for other people to accept. 'No thank you, sweet friend, I don't want your jankety angel figurine and your re-gifted, chemically scented Christmas candle. Thanks though.'

So, as I navigate through this mess of stuff, don't be mad at me if I refuse stuff with a polite, 'No, thanks." I promise I won't call your stuff jankety. Sadly, after all this cleaning at work, I'm not completely done yet. I hauled a lot of this criz-nap to my classroom to officially go through it before school starts. Here's a pic of just one load. Yikes!

My teamie Jessica--worked for 4 hours with a broken toe. Dedication!

Updates on my classroom to follow. Pray for me. Just kidding. But really.