Nice and Easy!

Day 4 ~ January 4, 2010

Today was a little bit of a challenge. First thing this morning I started in search of my 10 items and quickly felt a little overwhelmed knowing that I can't just chuck everything directly in the trash... some of these items need to just go to another home... to someone in need. This means I now have to figure out where to send them and how to get them there... and it requires a commitment from me to follow through! I mean, I can't really count getting rid of them if I'm just moving them from one spot in my house to a pile in the garage that will sit there for another year! So, I'm working on this... I will come up with a game plan! For now, it's on to my 10 things for today!

1. Coupons! I have a love/hate relationship with coupons. I love how much money they save me when I really put in the work to work the system! I've been known to save hundreds of dollars in one trip to the grocery store! But when I start letting them stack up and get behind on my organizing I'd rather pay $10 for a jug of milk than sort through them! So, it's time for this stack to go!

2. My 13 year old loves origami. Because of this I often find things around the house that are folded into all sorts of things. In fact, and this is going to surprise you, I have a little crane hanging from the bottom of my kitchen cabinet that has been there probably for 2+ years. Okay, back to that folded up black piece of paper in my photo. It's one of his huge scores from some teacher taking down a bulletin board... what it was folded into I'm not sure. What I am sure about is that it's been sitting on a shelf outside my laundry room for a very loooooooooong time!

3. Another empty laundry soap bottle... and that's a BIG one! It was taking up a fair amount of space on the shelf!

4. FORE!!! Watch out because anybody can pretend they are Arnold Palmer with this next little gadget! A gift I lovingly bought for my husband for Christmas one year a few days after sitting and watching the HSN infomercial with him. We were rolling on the floor laughing at that little mini Arnold swinging his clubs! Sure, my husband probably only took him out of the box once... but I still consider that a great purchase, after all they are selling on ebay now as a vintage toy. If you'd like to see this baby in action click here.

5. The blue Swiffer handle that you get every time you buy a new box of Swiffer pads... surprisingly I only came across 1 of them. I know at some point I had many more because I recall giving a lot of thought to coming up with another use for them, I guess I must have bagged that idea a long time ago. Miracles do happen!

6. Such a proud puffed up moment! The moment your son walks through the door from school and excitedly says, "Mom, I'm student of the week! You need to put together a poster all about me so I can take it to school tomorrow!" That wonderful moment was 4 years ago, and there's the remains of the beautiful poster that has been sitting in the garage ever since.

7. Files from 2004... I'm not trashing the file box, but the contents are finally gone! I've been meaning to do that for months so that I could use the portable filing box to organize my sewing patterns! I wonder how long it will take me to get them in there?! Go ahead, you can take some bets on the side if you want.

8. Smartwater... I can vouch for the fact that it doesn't really make you smarter... but the bottle might! My straight A 7th grader had been using that for his daily water bottle through the summer months. But honestly, I don't think he was using it for it's smartness properties... I think it was more about reinforcing to those watching him drink that he is indeed smarter than them.

9. I don't know of a single mom who doesn't feel unnerved at her newborn sitting in the backseat facing backwards where she can't see what the heck is going on. The what-if's are endless. Something else unnerving is the cost of baby gear and that is why I bought my special backseat baby mirror at a discount store. When I purchased it, the anticipation of knowing I was going to be able to see my baby while driving was so exciting... and relieving! Until I got it home and pulled off the protective plastic that covered the mirror and realized that it had permanently ruined the mirror's surface! (Hmmm... the Arizona heat might have had something to do with that.) Like all hoarders though, I'm not really great at following through with returns. So I used that mirror anyway... for about a month. And every time I tried to look in the mirror to see my baby it just ticked me off all over again! It was like someone (myself) was playing a sick joke on me, making me think I could keep an eye on my baby when really all I saw were foggy images of movement! So I finally took it out! And put it in my garage! Hmph!

10. Seeing as we are a family of 7 living on one income, I don't allow myself the luxury of going to the salon more than once a year. I think going that long without a real hair makeover also somehow messes with my head because I will have a temporary moment of insanity where I will decide I'm going to buy hairdye and do it myself! This is a Nice N' Easy auburn color... luckily at the last minute I decided against doing it myself. I guarantee you that if I would have followed through with the insanity I would not have looked nice and to my husbands dismay I would not have been easy... I would have just been really grumpy!