Making February Special: Week 1

 ORGANIZE

Verily announced that they would be hosting week-long challenges for the month of February to make it feel a little more special & uplifting. Since I love challenges and kind of dread February I decided it could be a fun thing.

Then...they announced that "organize" would be the first week's challenge and I knew this was definitely going to be fun...because "organize" is kind of a magic word for me. Ha.

Admittedly, most of our home is pretty well-organized. Last semester was difficult for us in a number of ways and one way I coped was with organizing and decluttering almost every area of our home. The good was twofold: it gave me a constructive, challenging, and strategic activity to work on in the evenings and on the weekends, and having an orderly and tidy external space helped foster a calmer interior spirit too. While I'm normally an advocate for going medieval and following Thomas Aquinas' remedies for sadness when you're feeling down, I found comfort in organizing our closets & cabinets and it did me & our home well.

But, because organizing--at best--is only a temporary palliative for the chaos that disordered stuff causes, there were a few areas in my home that needed to be revisited since this fall. Besides that, our homes are just one place that need order so I took this as an opportunity to focus some organizing vibes on other areas in my life as well.

Monday: Bathroom Closet 

This was a quick & satisfying project since I had given the space a once-over back in August. What was working well were the two clear bins which help keep our most- used items separated, tidy, and standing upright, keeping bathroom cleaners in the bathroom, and stacking wire storage bins on the floor to make use of the empty, vertical space. What really wasn't working was having 6+ different, unlabeled & unorganized containers/baskets for medicine cabinet items and the placement of a few things (towels, beard trimmer, etc.) that just didn't fit well in their current homes. Luckily, I had the two sets of plastic drawers on hand from a dumpster dive which I think will work splendidly for medicine, and rearranging a few other things a little differently made our most-used items more accessible. 

Tuesday: Candlemas Dinner 

Maybe this is a little bit of a stretch, but all I really "organized" on Tuesday was a little feast-day dinner for a couple friends. We don't normally see folks during the week because we get so busy and worn out from work, but this was a nice treat! No photos to share because we devoured everything the moment I  set it on the table, but I'm happy to share the recipes as they were all new to me & rather successful: 

Slow Cooker Pork Shoulder | Variety of Roasted Veggies | Pavlova with Lemon Curd & Berries 

Wednesday: Desk at Work 

After a frustrating, 2 1/2 hour-long encounter with a printer the day before, I decided to  treat myself and declutter & organize the entirety of my desk on Wednesday. Generally speaking, it wasn't too big of a project. The main things were to clean up my go-to drawer that I'd been throwing everything into lately and to uphaul the file drawer which just contained a lot of outdated materials and other paper items which have long been available in digital form. I didn't really think to take before pictures, but just imagine that all these drawers were completely full at the beginning of the morning now the only thing full is my garbage can. Yasss.

Thursday: Photos on My Phone 

My very least favorite thing to organize are digital files...photos in particular. It's been a problem for now half of my life -- since I got my first digital camera at 13 -- because I've never been able to follow a consistent system for long. It will be a great accomplishment to someday organize all of my digital photos...but Thursday was not that day. Thursday was just the day that I started the process by deleting unnecessary photos from my phone from the last year...which totaled about 500. Yikes. But...Look at these cute ones I found in the process!! 

Friday: Next Week's Meals & Grocery List 

One of Nick's 2021 resolutions was that we have a menu & grocery list made each week. So now that is something I (mostly) organize every week so Nick's resolution doesn't fail. *wink* We're only a month into the new year, but so far this has been going exceptionally well. So just like in weeks past, I made up our menu on Friday & then did the shopping on Saturday. 

Saturday: Christmas Takedown & Organize

With the Christmas season coming to an end just a few days prior, it was time to take down our decorations and do a quick declutter and organize as I put it back away. We don't have much for Christmas decor (and now we have even less...hehe) so this was another quick & painless task for the books. Admittedly, this was the only chore I accomplished the whole day...and it ended up being kind of a depressing one because now our house looks so empty and sad. 😅 Oh well, had to be done. Goodbye Christmas...hello Lent. Phooey. 

Sunday: I'm Not Going to Pretend That I Organized Anything

Because I didn't. ;) 

And that's a wrap for Week 1 of Making February Special. It was good fun and I'm ready to begin week 2's focus on beauty!