Mama's Off & Running: 21 Days to A More Disciplined Life

So, I follow a few blogs. Some time in the past two weeks, a couple of these blogs sent me information about a book called "21 Days to A More Disciplined Life" written by Crystal Paine.

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These bloggers received the book and have completed the first reading, I think. All of the bloggers are part of a 21 day challenge. And today, November 1, is the first day of their challenge. I am joining this challenge. I just re-read the beginning of the book and day 1, yesterday. My plan is to post about my 21 days. I am not going to commit to posting every day, as I see my last post was almost a month ago. But I am going to do my best!

Day 1 Recap: I love this idea. It is like she is in my head and just got it together before I figured it out. She is explaining how to make your list of big tasks and take baby steps to complete them. So, for today we need to complete one simple task, I ironed on Dancing Princess' AWANA patch to her Sparks Vest! Pretty simple task, but I am one to put it off. (For example, Swim Chick is no longer a Junior Girl Scout, she bridged up and now has a new vest. BUT, I still have to sew badges onto her Junior Vest! Not my idea of fun, obviously, and this is why it didn't get finished.) I have also found buttons to replace the two that are missing. I can check that step off.

Next she has asked us to write up our big list of things to do. I started my list. I also started to break down that list into smaller chunks of projects. Here are some of the tasks I continue to put off...

*Clean up the basement and get it organized
- Clean off my desk
   Sort piles
   Recycle what I can
   Put things in their proper place
   Basically, make this a useable space for my Shaklee Business!
   -Clean off the "work table"
   Sew up projects on the table and chairs
   Donate Home School stuff
   Basically, finish projects, toss or donate so this table can be used for scrapbooking or other fun stuff!
   -Organize the play area
   Legos
   Dress up
   Cars
   Trains
   Kitchen stuff...
   -Organize the boxes of clothes for kids to grow into
   -Sort stuff for donation boxes
   -Clean up the sewing and craft supplies
   -Clean up the shelves for food storage
   -Defrost the freezer... This list may get longer, but it is a start!!!
*Sew up my t-shirt quilt
*Sew patches on Swim Chick's vest and messenger bag
*Get Chess Master a sweatshirt and sew his scout patches onto it
*Blog more, get into a routine!
*Scrapbooks completed
   Christmas Album caught up and ready for the 2012 photos
   Dancing Princess: First year, school days, Girl Scouts...
   Chess Master: School days, Cub Scouts, fun books...
   Swim Chick: School Days, Scouts, Swimming, fun books...**Note: These are all books I have started and need to catch up on!!!!

The last task for today is to do one of the first tasks in your big job. So, I took before photos of the basement. I figured if I can complete this organization, then we can seriously talk about remodeling this space! (We would like to put in a small bathroom and family/TV room. You will see here, that can't happen if there is no where to put it because of stuff!!)

This is the start of our donations. The table was put up for a Girl Scout event and never put away.

Part of the play area. My DH got fed up and banned the kids to the red carpet only for their toys and playing.

The other part of the play area, here you can actually see the red carpet. As you can tell there is not much room and it is in need of organization!

"Mark's Workout Area" this is the front of the play area. As of today he has banned the Wii and TV. This is how he expects the basement to look ALL the time!

This is the storage corner of the basement. You can see boxes and hanging clothes here. Dancing Princess and I have started to go through the 4 boxes of 6/6X clothing. I NEED to get this organized, because I am tired of tripping over it, myself.

Laundry area, a start of the organization!

More laundry space, but this corner is where we have too many other things that need new homes, too. There are 3 shelving units and one cabinet. The cabinet holds food stores, next to it are the canning jars and ice cream pails of oatmeal and flour. The smaller shelves in the middle of the photo have craft supplies and food stores. And the white shelves on the left are my bed sheets, I don't have a big linen closet so I have them here.


Here you see the white linen shelf and another large black shelf with more craft supplies and it is in disarray. You are also getting a glimpse of the office space.

THE Office space:

Wall 1: I am embarrassed to show this but it is my desk. Nice piles don't you think! That little basket is the Christmas Cards from last year that need to get into a scrapbook!