Oganizing my Life!

I'm really enjoying this summer more than summers in the past.  Of coarse I love the extra time I have with Katie.  I love our new playgroup and meeting other kids Katie's age and their mommies.  I love not setting my alarm clock for 6:30am.  And I love not being too sleepy to stay up late and hang out with Andy.

But I've also been getting organized and it feels so good!  My 2 favorite things are my biweekly menu and my new cleaning schedule.

I started making a biweekly menu about a year ago and got this dry erase board to keep up with schedules and meals a few months ago.  I love it.  I don't spend as much money at the grocery store anymore.  I don't buy too much food that goes bad before we get to eat it.  I don't buy tons of snacks that I really don't need to eat anyway.  I portion out my meats as I get them and freeze them and thaw out what I need in the fridge a couple of days early so we don't eat fast food very much anymore because we're too tired or hungry to take the time to thaw and cook dinner!  It's saved me money and TIME!

My most favorite though is the cleaning schedule.  I tried this several times while school was going on but just couldn't keep up.  Our house had gotten SO messy that I was just overwhelmed and felt like I wasn't making any headway.  Now that I have the summer off, I've been really deep cleaning our house head to toe using the cleaning schedule to organize what I clean and when.  It really hasn't been too bad and I can say our house is cleaner now than it's been in a very long time.

Now that I'm organized and the house is clean I actually have time to sit and blog, digital scrapbook, sew, and just relax!  Usually I can't get to the sewing machine around all the mess and I can't relax and enjoy blogging or scrapbooking when I have a list a mile long of chores to do and am surrounded by mess and clutter.  Now I can start on my hobbies and enjoy them.  I hope now that the house is in pretty good shape, it will be easier to keep up with the cleaning schedule after school starts back.