30 day challenge finale

So I looked at the calendar today and apparently it's Thursday. I don't know when that happened because I'm pretty sure the last time I looked it was only Tuesday and I still had one more day to try and do some cleaning before I had to come back here and face the music. But I have run out of stalling time so someone start the band as we round up the very last week of the 30 day challenge. Cue the banner

So first a recap of the jobs I was meant to do this week. 

• Tackle one shelf in the pantry
• Pick a room, wash all windows
• Scrub the grout in the shower
• Find another hot spot in the house and clean it up
• Vacuum the couches and under the couches
• Go on a cobweb hunt. Get rid of every single cobweb in the house
• Pick a room and wash all walls from floor to ceiling
• Pick a room, wash all windows
• Steam clean the carpets

Now before I tell you what I ended up accomplishing this week I will start with an excuse. My dog ate my homework and I slept through my alarm this morning before getting stuck in traffic and I had to go to the doctors first and the queues were huge. Plus I have this cough. 

So this week sadly nothing got done. Well not exactly nothing, I did get some homework done, and yesterday I went shopping, so that was kind of fun. But sadly after our very dramatic weekend I really couldn't find the inspiration to care about cobwebs and grout so cleaning this week was basically making sure there was nothing on the floor that I could trip and break my neck on. And even that was too hard some days. I did kill a massive huntsman spider who was holding me hostage in the toilet, but given I never did get around to cleaning the remains of his insides from the toilet wall I guess that can't even be counted. 

So yet again the 30 day challenge ends with a whimper instead of a roar. I would love to be able to finish this series with the proclamation that I am now a cleaning goddess who laughs in the face of grime and folds laundry while vacuuming the floors, but I am still exactly the same lazy slob I was at the beginning. But it's not all doom and gloom, I did manage to get some of the things on my list done, I ended up taking 4 boxes and 3 bags of things to a local op shop for donating, and we do have some spots in the house that are starting to look a lot better, but there is still a lot to be done. 

I am actually hoping once I've finished school for the year that I will have some extra time to devote to the housework during the summer. Of course that is provided I don't get distracted by something shiny again. 

Well that's it for the time being, I now need to go back and find something else I want to accomplish and make a new 30 day challenge. If I can force myself to focus for long enough I should hopefully have something ready by Monday. 

So until next time my wonderful readers stay awesome, and if any of you can think of anything that might stop me from getting so distracted next time, feel free to drop me a line in the comments and I'll be sure to try it. 

30 day challenge update

So what do my internet connection and a lawyer have in common? Neither of them work unless you pay their bill.

With that in mind I apologize for the lateness of this update, and without further ado, I think it's time to get on with my latest 30 day challenge update.

So I'm sure that given it's been more than 2 weeks since I've updated this you've probably all forgotten what jobs I was meant to be doing this time around. So for all of you wonderful people, here is an update. For anyone who wants to re-read the last post, you can check it out here

• Tackle my craft area, throw out anything I don’t think I’ll ever use and organize everything else into tubs and folders
• Clean the stove and oven
• Empty the bathroom cupboard and dispose of almost empty or expired products
• Empty the laundry room out and sweep and mop. Return everything to the room neatly
• Empty out the computer desk drawers and throw out old cables and other junk. Return necessary cables in a neat fashion
• Reorganize Miss K’s toys, throw out any toys that she has outgrown or doesn’t play with
• Pick a room and wash all walls from floor to ceiling

So I am proud to be able to say that this time I was actually able to accomplish some of the things on this list. While I didn't get anywhere near the craft desk, we now have a sparkling clean oven, bathroom cupboard and computer desk (thanks to mum). Miss K's toys have been reorganized and I managed to force myself to part with one or two of them. (I am really much too sentimental about her things.) I also didn't get around to washing any walls, but I'm not stressing too much about that one. And just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I even went back to a few of the jobs from the week before that I didn't get around to, and now I have gotten rid of all my old clothes that no longer fit me, and all the appliances got a wipe down. Mum even got into the pantry and emptied that out, which is no small feat considering it is one of our larger junk areas in the house.

So this week was pretty huge as far as cleaning goes, and I feel all the better for it. Now I am up to the 9 days of cleaning, and the jobs I am meant to accomplish this time around are below.

• Tackle one shelf in the pantry
• Pick a room, wash all windows
• Scrub the grout in the shower
• Find another hot spot in the house and clean it up
• Vacuum the couches and under the couches
• Go on a cobweb hunt. Get rid of every single cobweb in the house
• Pick a room and wash all walls from floor to ceiling
• Pick a room, wash all windows
•  Steam clean the carpets

 So there you have it, 9 more days 9 more jobs to go. Given that this is the last 9 days of the challenge your next update will come on Wednesday instead of Monday, but I know that you are all such wonderful and patient people so you won't mind an extra two days of waiting.

Well that's all there is for now, I'll be back again with your regular scheduled blog shortly. Until then, stay awesome.

30 day challenge update

It's that time of the week again, start the marching band and everyone join in the parade!!! Or I could just put the banner up and get on with it... Yeah lets just go with that.

Yes I am back with another update on my 30 days to become tidier. Now for all of you who need a reminder, my jobs for this week were:

• Take all of your clothes out of their drawers and cupboards and sort them into piles to be thrown in the bin, donated to the second hand store or kept. Only put away the clothes in the keep pile
• Empty the freezer and throw out food that you no longer want
• Wipe down every appliance in the house
• Pick one room, wash all windows
• Clean the hallway completely
• Find another cupboard full of junk and empty it out
• Pick a room and wash all the walls from floor to ceiling

So this week was slightly successful, but still not a complete total crack open a bottle of champagne and celebrate because you are just that awesome success. Because there was so much that ended up being missed, it would be quicker to tell you what did get done. So the freezer got emptied out of all old food, leaving lots of room for my supply of coffee flavoured ice cream. I also got into the wardrobe in mum's room and cleaned out the floor space there, leaving everything neat and tidy. I know I was meant to clean a whole cupboard out, but given that the floor alone took a whole afternoon I am happy to count that as an entire task and leave the shelf space for another week. On the plus side, during my travels into the wardrobe I managed to hunt down all of our Christmas decorations, so given there are only 84 days left until Christmas, we are more prepared than we were this time last year.

And that is all that I accomplished on my list this week. Given that it has rained for 4 of the 7 days this week it was too wet to slosh water around again, and the rest of the jobs kind of got forgotten between visiting family and re-reading the Hunger Games series for the third time in a row. (Seriously, how good are those books?)

But I will persevere because despite appearances things are slowly getting done around here so I'm still hoping to actually have a happy ending to this month. With that in mind, here are this weeks jobs to attempt.

• Tackle my craft area, throw out anything I don’t think I’ll ever use and organise everything else into tubs and folders
• Clean the stove and oven
• Empty the bathroom cupboard and dispose of almost empty or expired products
• Empty the laundry room out and sweep and mop. Return everything to the room neatly
• Empty out the computer desk drawers and throw out old cables and other junk. Return necessary cables in a neat fashion
• Reorganise Miss K’s toys, throw out any toys that she has outgrown or doesn’t play with
• Pick a room and wash all walls from floor to ceiling

So as you can see the jobs are getting tougher, which means that my will to clean will probably shrink even further this week. But I will try my absolute hardest to get something done this week, but probably not today, because I have just discovered a new flavour of Tim Tams, and I must take them over to my big sister's place to try them out.

30 day challenge update

It's past that time of the week again, and I am sorry that this update is late, but I have been so busy making excuses as to why I couldn't do my work, I didn't have time to do my work. But without any further ado let us begin with the pretty banner.

So if the fact that this update is now two days overdue doesn't give you a hint as to how I am progressing, then let me fill you in. For anyone who wants to start at the beginning, check out this post here

While I am still determined to stop being a lazy slob and become the kind of person who doesn't have to worry exactly how long that bottle has been sitting there with dried milk inside it, putting my plans into action is proving to be just as hard the second time around. Just as a reminder, here are the jobs I set myself for this week.

Day 1 - Create a cleaning schedule for every job that needs to be done around the house. Organise the jobs into ones that need to be done daily, weekly, monthly etc and nominate a day that each job needs to be done

Day 2 - Get rid of at least ten things today. Throw them in the bin or take them to the second hand store, but get them out of the house

Day 3 - Power clean day. Set a buzzer for fifteen minutes and only clean until the buzzer goes off. Take a short break and repeat. Keep going until all your work for the day is complete. 

Day 4 - Tackle my bedroom and get it clean and liveable. 

Day 5 - Find one house hot spot (a place where junk always seems to end up) and clean it thoroughly

Day 6 - Find one cupboard that is full of junk and get it cleaned out and all unnecessary junk ready to be thrown in the bin or taken to the second hand store

Day 7 - Pick a room and wash all the walls from floor to ceiling. 

So as I mentioned on day 1 of last week, that job was easy, and has been done. Yay success! Day two not so successful. I have boxes and bags of things waiting to be donated to the op shop all around the house. But I didn't add anything new to these boxes on day 2, nor did I get the boxes out of the house. I'm pretty sure I threw out ten things while I was tidying up the lounge room on that day, but I think the point of that exercise was more than just get rid of all the wrappers from the chocolates I ate the night before. Day 3 was not a power clean day, I think it was more of a sit down and chat with all of the people who came over to visit day, as that is exactly what I did. All day. Day 4 came and went and my bedroom still wasn't liveable, I can't even remember what I did on day 5, but it certainly wasn't clean out any hot spots. Day 6 is a total blank. Did we even have a Saturday this week? Has someone been stealing my days and not telling me? Well if there was a Saturday this week it wasn't spent cleaning out any cupboards. Day 7 was slightly more productive, but not entirely to task. I managed to go through all of my hanging space in mum's wardrobe and sort out all of Miss K's dresses and my special occasions outfits, and I threw out a lot of things that are either out of fashion or way too big for me now that I have lost so much weight. We also got all of the walls in the lounge room washed, but that was only because we were painting this week and it had already been organised. 

So the first 7 days was kind of a bust. But I think I know why. I have realised I can't sit down a week in advance and schedule things so strictly as plans around here change so quickly it is impossible to know whether or not I will actually have time to do the things I want to ahead of time. So from this point on I won't be allocating a job for each day, I will be allocating jobs for a week, and hopefully doing it this way will promise a little more success. So my jobs for this week are as follows...

• Take all of your clothes out of their drawers and cupboards and sort them into piles to be thrown in the bin, donated to the second hand store or kept. Only put away the clothes in the keep pile
• Empty the freezer and throw out food that you no longer want
• Wipe down every appliance in the house
• Pick one room, wash all windows
• Clean the hallway completely
• Find another cupboard full of junk and empty it out
• Pick a room and wash all the walls from floor to ceiling

So thanks to my spur of the moment wardrobe clean last week the first job is already partially done. I just have one chest of drawers to go through and empty out and the first job can be ticked off. Mum also got rid of a heap of the old food in the freezer yesterday, so that job should be fairly quick and easy too. The big jobs like windows and walls can probably be done tomorrow or the next day as we are meant to have some lovely weather coming up, so perfect excuse to start sloshing water around the house. 

So fingers crossed doing it this way is a little bit easier for me, and I'll report back to you guys again next Monday. (Unless I get distracted by something shiny again)

Well that's it for now, I'm off to bed finally, and I'll try again tomorrow.

The new 30 day challenge

Hi peeps, as I mentioned yesterday I am reinventing my 30 ways in 30 days challenge to make it more achievable and easier for me to follow. Previously I just had a list of tips for being more organised, and while it was good inspiration, and worked for a little while, it just wasn't structured or organised properly so failure was imminent. So having said that, allow me to introduce you to...

Ooh it even has it's own banner!

That's right, 30 day challenge series. Because I don't just want to change one habit here, I have a heap of them I want to change, so each of them deserves its own challenge. Below in no particular order is a list of all of the parts of my life that I want to change, but I may add to it at a later date. 

30 day challenges I would like to complete

Finish all the projects I have started

Stick to a more organised and scheduled day

Become tidier

Get rid of all the clutter

Become an exercise junkie

Quit smoking

Become a better healthier cook

Make my blog more well known

Create and use a household binder

Become better at handling my finances

Stop hating going shopping

Organise my craft area

Make my bedroom look and feel pretty

So it makes sense to start with the more urgent bad habits first so my very first 30 day challenge will be to become tidier. Now there will be some overlap with some of these challenges, part of getting tidier will be to get rid of all of the clutter, but really this challenge is going to be all about learning to be more house-proud and making my job as a mum a whole lot easier by removing a lot of little jobs from my day. 

So what is going to happen is I am giving myself seven days of challenges at a time, and I'll share them with you all at the beginning of each week. I will be coming back here at the end of every week to report my progress and how successful I have been at completing my challenges for the week, and hopefully at the end of the 30 days I will have formed better housekeeping habits to last me a lifetime. So my first seven days of challenges are:

Day 1 - Create a cleaning schedule for every job that needs to be done around the house. Organise the jobs into ones that need to be done daily, weekly, monthly etc and nominate a day that each job needs to be done

Day 2 - Get rid of at least ten things today. Throw them in the bin or take them to the second hand store, but get them out of the house

Day 3 - Power clean day. Set a buzzer for fifteen minutes and only clean until the buzzer goes off. Take a short break and repeat. Keep going until all your work for the day is complete. 

Day 4 - Tackle my bedroom and get it clean and liveable. 

Day 5 - Find one house hot spot (a place where junk always seems to end up) and clean it thoroughly

Day 6 - Find one cupboard that is full of junk and get it cleaned out and all unnecessary junk ready to be thrown in the bin or taken to the second hand store

Day 7 - Pick a room and wash all the walls from floor to ceiling. 

So that's my first week all planned out. So today is day 1 of my challenge, and probably my easiest day because I had already started mapping out a cleaning schedule before today. (Technically cheating I know, but I'm the one making the rules here so I can play dirty if I want.) I'll check back with you guys next Monday with my progress and hopefully pictures if I remember to drag my trusty camera out of hiding while I'm cleaning. 

Well that's it for now, I'll be back next Monday with my progress report and another 7 days of challenges for myself. Anyone watching at home, please feel free to join in with me if the mood strikes you, and of course I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. Don't forget to click on the pretty buttons to the right of your screen and join me on Facebook or Twitter for more hijinxes and fun, and until next time, stay awesome.

Dear Diary the more buttons edition

Ladles and jelly spoons welcome again to another Sunday round up. I'm going to start today by once again drawing your wonderful attention to the little sidebar to the right of your screen. There is another button there for you to click, this one takes you to my brand spanking new twitter account! And it didn't take me weeks to figure out how to link the two up this time. I'm getting even better at this. One day I will rule the world with the power of widgets.

So yes another week has passed and as I started the count down a couple of days ago, I should let you know there are only 99 sleeps until Christmas. I looked back at that blog post, (for any of you who haven't read my thoughts on Christmas yet, check out this post here) and it all looks pretty dismal. I should probably clarify that I don't hate Christmas, and even before I gave birth to Miss K I got involved in all of the tree decorating and the family dinners, but it was done with a level of sarcasm and indifference that would make the Grinch proud. However these days, because I don't want my nieces, nephew or daughter to know that there are people out there who don't think that Christmas is all that and a bag of potato chips I bite my tongue. I've even started shopping for Miss K's presents and am madly looking up Christmas check-lists to see if I can't find some way to make the silly season a little more relaxed this year.

So it's been pretty quiet around here lately, I was madly studying for the first part of the week, desperately trying to get my homework submitted as close to its actual due date as possible. I still can't get my final assignment to balance, so I decided it was time to call in the experts and I've sent it to my teacher, to see if she can't figure out where the heck I went wrong. I know it will be something stupid that I should be able to spot, but I'm at one of those places where I can't see the woods for the trees so I am hoping that her trained eye can help me out here. I'm expecting an email any week now.

Now my baby brother Ben and his partner came down for a visit at the beginning of this week, and when they finally went home that evening I thought it would be the last we would see of them for another few weeks at least. Well I have never been so wrong in my life, because they are at my little sister's house as we speak having some Sunday sippers. Now we haven't seen Tristan yet, as he had to wait until after work to catch the train down, but Ben came over for a few hours this afternoon and had a play with Miss K. This time I remembered to bring out my camera and I got some gorgeous pictures of them.

Miss K trying to get Ben to play the harmonica. His face cracks me up every time

Ben trying to get Miss K to play the harmonica. She was more reluctant to play so those little lips stayed tightly clamped at all times.

Ben got some even better photos on his phone while I wasn't looking, so as soon as he can upload them on my computer I'll be sharing them with you.

Miss K and I went out to lunch with an old friend of mine today, we decided to go to McDonalds as the one here has a semi decent playground area for kids, which meant I didn't have to deal with a bored one year old while I tried to play catch-up with my friend. It was a pleasant afternoon and Miss K won so many hearts while we were there we walked away with two new friends at the end of the day. There were two little girls in particular, similar in age to Miss K's cousins, and she followed them around like a little lost puppy dog the whole time they were in the play area. I am so glad that Miss K is such a social little girl, I certainly can't work a room as well as she does.

Also on Miss K, she is walking more and more each day, and yesterday she even managed to get herself into a standing position from sitting without using a piece of furniture to help her. I know that she is only doing what every baby does but it is ridiculous how excited I get every time she learns something new. Mum and I took her shopping to K Mart last night, and she walked around the shop the whole time. I expected her to get tired of walking very quickly but she refused to let me carry her anywhere, insisting that she could do it all by herself. Not that I'm complaining of course, because all that walking meant that she slept through the whole night.

The 30 ways in 30 days challenge finished this week, with mixed results and I have decided to try doing another challenge with a similar theme, but to tone it down a bit this time so that I don't get so completely overwhelmed and lose interest. There will be more information coming up tomorrow. 

Well that's it for another week, I am now going to go watch Mrs Browns Boys with mum and hope I don't fall asleep on the couch. Don't forget to check out my Facebook page and my lovely new Twitter page and feel free to like them both. 

30 ways in 30 days challenge complete

So apparently my 30 days to get organised finished on the 12th of this month. Of course you can probably guess that the entire project wasn't completely successful otherwise I would have known this little bit of information well in advance and had a blog post ready to publish on that day. But while I am still not the Martha Stewart of Australia, I have learnt a lot this month and I'm going to share my new nuggets of wisdom with you. (Mainly because I like using the word nuggets in a sentence that isn't related to food.)

Rome wasn't built in a day

So the first thing I learnt was that things like cleaning a house from top to bottom, or learning how to be better organised take time. And a lot of mistakes. And a lot of forgiving yourself for being human and needing lots of Tim Tam and Facebook breaks. There is also the frustration that comes with realising that 30 days is a long time and you will need the full 30 days just to scratch the surface that is your lazy slovenly personality, and that can be very boring and time consuming. There are also days where the work exceeds the rewards by one hundred to one, where you've spent the day washing dishes and doing vacuuming only to see the sink is full again and there are fresh crumbs on your newly cleaned carpet. Waking up the next day can be very hard to do after you've come to the realisation that there is no end to your work. But then the days where you get to sit in a clean lounge room and enjoy your coffee knowing that your vulture of a daughter can't find anything to eat off the carpet, nor can she find any pointy things to jab in her eye can feel pretty good. So can the realisation that if a friend pops in for a surprise visit, you won't be ashamed to let them in the door.

To do lists are an organised person's best friend

So I started out writing myself a new to do list every night before I went to bed, and on the days that I did this I accomplished a lot. Of course having a list of tasks in front of you prevents you from forgetting anything you need to cram into your day, and it also forces you to realise you don't have enough hours to sit around and drink coffee (like you want to) and get everything on your list done (like you need to). You also have no excuse to say your bored if you have a to do list staring at you everywhere you move, daring you to ignore it. Now of course after a few days of using my to do lists, I made the mistake so many rookies make, I felt that I was now experienced enough to remember absolutely everything I had to get done in a day so I got rid of my trusty to do list and things very quickly fell apart. So my lesson has been learnt, and I now know that I need to jot down absolutely everything I think I might want to get done the next day, right down to getting dressed in the morning. Because apparently if it's not in writing, I don't have to do it.

Don't take on too much at once

I learnt this one on about day four when I decided that our pantry and cupboards needed an overhaul. Now we have a huge double door pantry that is used for food storage, as well as a quick hidey hole for anything that doesn't have its own home. As a result any decisions to tackle this cupboard usually take an entire day. Now I decided to get started on our pantry at 8:30 at night. After a full day of cleaning. Needless to say I lasted half an hour before I realised there wasn't enough coffee in the world to get this project finished before breakfast the next day and promptly gave up for the night. (Right after I carefully put everything back into the cupboard to save myself more work the next morning) Now I did go back to the kitchen cupboards, but I did them over several days. And even then there is more that could be done in the pantry as I really only focused on the food storage area. But even just getting that section organised and easier to use was a good feeling. Now that I am on top of my school work again I may schedule some time in the coming weeks to tackle a different shelf, and see if I can't get the whole thing looking pretty by the end of the year.

You can have too many shoes

Or too many handbags, or too many toys. One of the biggest problems in my house isn't the general day to day mess that comes with living in a house, it's all the extra little pieces that have come into the house over the years and have proceeded to make themselves comfortable into any empty space in the house that they can find. These are the things that make a house look messy, and these are also the things that can be the hardest to clean up when you decide to overhaul your house. As I mentioned earlier we have a pantry that doubles as storage. We also have a wall near the laundry, a table in our family room, a cupboard in my mum's room and two cupboards in the laundry. All of these have been filled with things over the years that fall into the I dunno category. The tall cupboard in our laundry is my personal favourite. Among other things, it contains a large box of trophies, a gymnast's ribbon, a printer and a bag full of the little things that used to take up space in my old laundry. Rummaging through it really is like taking a trip down memory lane, but given the sentimental value of everything in that cupboard, it is too hard to throw any of it out, so there it stays, taking up valuable space. Now over the past few weeks I have started going through all of my belongings and Miss K's belongings and throwing out a lot of stuff. Toys that Miss K is too old for, or she has never really taken an interest in, clothing that I no longer wear, because it is too big, or too misshapen or too ugly. things that have sat in my repair pile for months because I can't be bothered fixing them and useless crap that I have bought on the spur of the moment and never used. But there is still so much stuff filling up my space I could probably throw out even more. This is where my little brother excels and I don't. If ever we need a space cleaned out completely we bring him in because he is absolutely ruthless. The words sentimental value mean very little to him so throwing out all of our treasured memories comes a lot easier to him.

So there you have it. I've learned a lot but I still have a long way to go. I may try again, but make my goal a little bit smaller next time, and instead of trying to become super woman in 30 days I'll try having a household binder complete instead, and then move on from there. If anyone out there has any words of advice for me before I move on, please feel free to drop them below in the comments section, I hate to admit it, but I need all the help I can get.

30 ways in 30 days update

So I know I haven't spoken about my aim to get more organised in 30 days lately, between people getting sick and losing all motivation to clean it really hasn't been the foremost thing on my mind lately. And in true lazy person style I now have a week to become the most organised person in the world, so it's time to cram 30 days of organising into 7.

Luckily for me I had made great headway in getting better organised before I fell off my wagon. My kitchen has been completely overhauled and re-organised, my pantry and food cupboards all organised and stacked neatly so all I really need to do in there is keep checking them every couple of days to make sure they are staying neat and tidy. (They usually aren't but checking them at least once a week means that the clutter doesn't get a chance to get out of hand.) The lounge room was pristine for the longest time, but again I stopped caring so it's slowly going back to its old ways, and what's worse, all of Miss K's toys have made their way back in here as she drives us insane when there isn't anything to play with in here, but there isn't any system in place for putting them away. So that's another thing to tackle by adding a light toy box that can be removed at the end of the day to give us back our adult space.

My biggest job that I want to tackle now isn't actually something anyone will see when they walk into the house. I want to create a household binder, where I will put all my to do lists, cleaning rosters, recipes, important dates, and anything else I need to make the house run smoothly. Luckily for me I have access to the internet, where I can get free printable templates for a lot of what I want. I also have a wonderful big sister who has already created a household binder for her house, and is in the process of re-designing all of her files, as she lost them when her external hard drive broke several months ago. So I have called dibs on copies of all of her files too. But given that making these files is a slow process I have decided to have a look online while I'm waiting for my sister's documents. So that is what was doing when I stumbled upon this particular cleaning check-list tonight.

Apologies if this picture is a bit too small to see, it is actually designed to print at A4, so squashing it into my tiny little blog tends to make it hard to read, but you should be able to get the general gist of what this document wants you to do. What you see here is a DAILY check-list. Obviously this is a cleaning check-list for people who have absolutely nothing else to do with their time other than clean the house. This is the kind of document that makes the housework impaired people of this world (like me) want to burn their houses down after the first day just to avoid having to repeat this process more than once. I just love that it assumes that we have enough time during a load of washing to dust light fixtures, organise a whole pantry or fridge, and polish all of our shiny stuff (as a former collector of shiny stuff, that really was a job that would take a day all on its own). I'm lucky to get half of my dishes done in the time it takes for my washing machine to complete a load. (I still haven't figured out if that means I have a super fast washing machine, or I'm really slow at doing the dishes.)

Of course if you do actually manage to follow this cleaning schedule to the bitter end (including organising all of your junk drawers, organising your backyard items, folding and putting away all of your laundry and cleaning the grill) and you make it to the last step of preparing a celebratory drink, you will most likely need a double shot of whiskey, followed by a double shot of vodka, just to erase the depressing thought in your head that you have nothing better to do with your day other than clean your house from top to bottom.

If of course you are like me, you will bypass all of the cleaning beforehand and just go straight to the celebratory drink at the end. Right after you screw up the piece of paper you printed this check-list on and throw it into the recycling bin. (We're alcoholics, not slobs remember)

Dear Diary the eventful week edition

Well it's that time of the week again, and what a week it has been. There have been some major changes this week for both me and Miss K and I am bursting at the seams to share them all with you.

So today I'm going to start with Miss K for a change, and it has definitely been a big week for her. We are currently trying to encourage her to start walking by herself. At the moment she is happy enough to walk as long as someone is holding her hand. My sister and I sit on the floor with her and we can manage to get her to walk several steps between us, as long as there is chocolate involved. But once the chocolate is all gone her motivation to walk disappears and she resumes crawling everywhere. She shows signs that she is ready to walk, but she just hasn't gained the confidence yet. But tonight was a big night for her, she managed to stand all by herself for a full 20 seconds before she realised that she was standing unsupported and freaked out. Then she dropped onto her bottom like a tonne of bricks. So that was a pretty exciting moment for me. It was also the first time I managed to contain my excitement when she stands up alone, as I usually start making noises which just brings her attention to it and makes her fall down. So a huge step forward for both of us. Another big development for Miss K is that she has finally discovered the word no. Now at bed time or when we share a shower she starts shaking her head madly and yelling no. It's very cute and fun to watch, but with all the jiggling, it is getting just that little bit harder to hold her. She has also started saying grandpa this weekend, but coming from her mouth it sounds like ba pa. Again very cute and I get her to say it as much as possible.

As for me, this week has also been a big week. As mentioned earlier in the week I'm starting a 30 day challenge to see if I can't get better organised and on top of my housework. I won't go into everything on this post because it is big enough to deserve a post of its own, but needless to say this week has been a huge learning curve for me, but I haven't given up yet and I feel that I may be on my way to being a better organised and tidier person. That's not to say I haven't hit any stumbling blocks along the way, for one Miss K is spending more time in her bedroom at the moment, just because most of her toys have been moved in there, but the extra time in her room has come with extra cleaning for me as every time she goes in there she absolutely trashes the joint. And just in case you think I'm being over dramatic when I say she trashes the joint, I actually took pictures of it the other day as evidence.

See? Trashed.

So from being a room that I had to give a small tidy and dust to once a week it has now become a daily job. Occasionally I get Miss K to come and help put her toys away for me, and once I even managed to tidy it up while she was fast asleep in the cot. But I am beginning to feel this is a losing battle, and I'm at my wits end as to how to stop her upturning every single box in the room. It's all good for her as she can't fold yet so I can't get her to help tidy up the bibs and body suits. But I'm now beginning to regret buying so many of them as I have to re-fold each and every one of them every night. 

On the family front my little sister is settling into her new home nicely, I think she's loving living so close to work as she can now be on call for whenever they need her, instead of needing at least an hours notice to start work so she could figure out how to get there. She has actually moved into a flat very close to where I was living before I moved back to mums house, and apparently my old neighbours in the block of flats next to mine were having a party last night that was so loud she could hear them even though they are several blocks of land away from her. Glad to see some things never change. I've told her if she hears a really loud television set being played it would be my old next door neighbour who is as deaf as a post and used to have her telly blaring all day. I never had to watch telly when I lived there because I could hear hers perfectly, even with all my doors and windows closed.

Well that's me done for another week, my little brother is coming down tonight for a quick visit, and I'm waiting to hear from him as he'll probably be wanting a lift from the train station. It just means I can't get into my pyjamas until they get here. The things I do for my family.

Just a quick reminder as well, you can now find me on Facebook here so come on over and like my page, you'll get updates as soon as I've posted another wonderful blog for you to read, I also get to update on what is happening with both me and Miss K more regularly there so you get to see more of us. Don't miss out.

30 ways in 30 days challenge

So I apologise for not writing yesterday, I had intended on coming on last night and bragging about how good I was yesterday, but after spending the entire day being all busy and mum-like I was so exhausted I didn't even look at the computer. But I had a good night's rest last night and I've not been quite so frenzied with my cleaning today so I still have plenty of energy right now to brag.

After I wrote this post about a blog I found giving inspiration on how to get organised, I decided it was not enough to just write down all the wonderful ideas on this blog and read it every day, it was time to actually do something about the state of my life. So I am starting my own 30 day challenge based on what I read. Yesterday was the first day and so far things are going very well. I can't say that it is a success just yet because it is easy to do something for one day. Trying to keep it up permanently is something that takes determination and will power. And those are two traits that I usually lack.

But that doesn't change how proud I am of my effort yesterday. I wrote myself a huge to do list on Sunday night and made myself work till I managed to tick off everything on the list. There were some things that I didn't actually get to accomplish, but it wasn't because I got bored and wandered off. One item on my list was buy new ink cartridges for my printer, but when I got to the computer store to make my purchase I was told that my printer is an absolute dinosaur, and they don't really sell ink cartridges for it any more. I could have gotten some ordered in specially, but it would have been cheaper to buy a brand new printer, as purchasing both a black and white and colour cartridge would end up costing me around $80. So I had to scratch that one off my list unfinished unfortunately.

Today there was a new to do list  written up, and I managed to accomplish quite a few things on the list. Again I came across stumbling blocks, like a supermarket that didn't sell borax, and a calculator that refuses to show itself, but again many items got crossed off, and those that didn't can just be added to tomorrows to do list, and then any day afterwards until I get them all completed. And on and on it will go for 30 days. And hopefully by the end of the 30 days I won't need to look at my inspiration every single morning before I get going, it will just be second nature for me to get up in the morning and do my job.

I'll be posting updates here every now and again just so you my wonderful readers can know how I'm progressing, but for now I have to get off the computer, as I'm only allowing myself half an hour on the computer at a time, as this is one of my biggest distractions, and I still have lots I could be doing. Wish me luck

Getting organised

So in an effort to find my missing mojo, I am still looking at the wonderful blogs and pins by other sickeningly capable people, all of whom make this stuff look super easy. I have stumbled tonight on a wonderful blog called Clean and Scentsible, by one such capable woman, and she has a post called 30 ways in 30 days to get organised. For anyone who wants to read this little gem of inspiration, you can find it here. I have written down absolutely everything she has written in this list, and tomorrow once I have bought more printer ink, I will be printing these wise words out, and pinning them up somewhere that I will be able to see on a regular basis every day. I'm thinking probably next to the door in my bedroom would be a good place to stick this for now. Hopefully if I can read this list every single day I will be able to find the inspiration to get better organised. Some of the tips she gives are so blindingly obvious you would think I shouldn't need to write them down to remember them, but when your mojo is MIA, then you forget all kinds of things, like getting dressed in the morning. So fingers crossed this is a step in the right direction for me.