One of my most favorite subjects

Besides Cooper I have at least one other favorite subject/pasttime. Ok--really (hopefully or maybe I'm a big dork/loser) I have more favorite subjects than these two, but if you know me well you'll understand how high on the list of favorites this one is.

CLEANING AND ORGANIZATION

Oh yes. Oh yes oh yes. I LOVE to have a clean home, a clean life, and have things very organized. Some may say that I take it to the next level when all the cans of food in my pantry have the labels facing forward. I blame that on working in a grocery store as a teen and having part of my job be pulling all the food/cans/boxes forward, rotating them on the shelf, and "facing" everthing. I could do several rows of food in an hour. The manager of the store loved that I loved to do it.

Getting off subject. Ok. So last week the ward I attended before we moved had guest speaker come to the Relief Society meeting (women's organization for our church). She spoke on organizing your home. Oh how I would have loved to have gone. I had it on my calendar and then as life would have it I just couldn't make it. Bummer.

But then my friend Megan blogged about the night on her blog. Thanks, Megan! And that is what spurred this one.

Even as a child I loved to clean and organize, but only to a certain level. I clearly recall being in the 1st grade and my mom forcing me to gather all the school papers/assignments I had kept since the beginning of kindergarten. Oh yes. I had kept every single paper. I remember my closet being filled with papers, grocery paper bags of papers and papers. My mom made me whittle down the pile to one paper bag and that's all I was allowed to keep at any given time. Then when we were moving (4th grade), she told me I could only keep one paper per year of school. What!? Those are the few papers that ended up in my scrapbook. The one from kindergarten is learning to write the letter "m," tracing lines and all. My memory fails as to why I picked that one.

That was my first major lesson in organization that I can remember. I do also remember the playroom rule that we were only allowed to have one toy out at a time. For instance, if I was playing dolls, then the puzzle I had played with 5 minutes before had to be put away. I don't think it always worked because I remember very well cleaning up that playroom time and time again. But I do remember the rule and trying to enforce it when my friends came over, and especially when my little brother was in the room. I loved to boss others into organization.

So skip ahead about 25 years and here we are today. I love to clean. Cleaning is very therapeutic to me. I secretly love it when Nathan goes out of town because I know I can clean and the house will stay my level of clean for a few days. One of the hardest things about adjusting to marriage was accepting or coming to a compromise on the level of cleanliness our home would have on a day-to-day basis. Over time I have become more lax about the clutter, especially now with the baby's toys strewn across the floor all the time, but it has been really hard for me. When my house is a wreck it stresses me out.

On the weekends I spend a good part of my Saturday cleaning. Part of this comes from growing up and spending every Saturday going a list of chores indoors and out. But part of it also comes from the fact that cleaning my house is my way of de-stressing from the week. There is something so satisfying to me about looking at my house around noon on Saturday and seeing things so clean, organized, and feeling fresh. Yard work is the same way for me and I can't wait for warmer weather.

I have become lax over time as well. My closet is no longer sorted by type of clothing, or by color. My shoes are in disarray on the closet floor, not arranged neatly by type and color. The tupperware/rubbermaid cabinet in my kitchen is a mess of bowls, containers and random lids. Yes, some things just aren't worth my time any more. But cleanliness will never be ok for me to skimp on. If you ever see something in my home not clean or dusted, like my disgusting carpet that has fallen victim to pets, baby spitup, and whatever my husband drags in on his shoes...know that its stressing me out in the back of my mind.

Keeping unnecessary things is another matter entirely. Nathan has rubbed off on me here. I am one for nostalgia and walking down memory lane. I used to have boxes and boxes of stuff from my teenage years and such. After moving so many times in the last 10 years, my personal memorabilia has been whittled down to a much more manageable size. Watching a lot of "Clean Sweep" on TLC rubbed off on me too. Now if I haven't used something for more than a year it's up for eligibility to be thrown out or given to charity. Sometimes I even go too far and end up throwing things out and later regret it when I have to re-buy it. Every time we move I get hounded by Nathan for the amount of kitchen gadgets/cookware we have. But everything I have I can safely say I've used in the last year. So when we move this next time, there may be another stack of stuff to throw out or give away, but it is getting smaller every time.

Things I no longer keep: dried flowers (I used to have dozens of dried boquets); greeting cards (except a very select few with special notes or such); more than 5 gift bags; more than 5 gift boxes; old Christmas cards; shampoo, makeup or personal items that haven't been used in 6 months; bills more than one month old (you can get everything online); clothes that are out of style or more than two sizes smaller than my current clothing size; more than 4 flower vases; more books than can fit on our current bookshelf; old magazines (all the old ones we have are Nathan's). If I want to keep a particular article, I'll cut out those pages and just keep those and put them in a file where I can go to them instantly when needed. There are a lot of things I've learned I just don't need to keep.

In reading Megan's blog there are two things I need to clean out--my undergarments drawer and my recipes. How do women acquire so many bras that they never seem to wear? I mean, really? I'm not talking about lingerie here. I'm talking bras (sorry guys). There are like 2 that I ever wear. Ok maybe 3 before I started nursing. But the rest sit in the drawer collecting dust. Note to self: think twice and keep your money in your wallet the next time you get the urge to buy another bra.

As for the recipes--that one is harder. I use a lot of recipes often. One I use often during the winter months is a "Autumn Stew" that I got from my Aunt Karla at my cousin's baptism. It's written on the back of the sunday program from that day. LOL. But I know exactly what it looks like, so it's easy to find. That's my excuse anyway. I have dozens upon dozens of recpies like that that need to be re-written/typed on an actual recipe card or something and organized in a better fashion than stuffed into the recipe box. Then there are the "someday I'll make this" recipes. Sometimes I do make them, but I guess if it's been sitting there longer than a year I'm probably not going to get around to making it, no matter how delicious it looked in that magazine.

So those are my two goals before we move again, which will probably be this summer (we're waiting again to hear where and when from Nathan's employer). Won't know until May. But that gives me at least 2 solid months to sort out the bras and recipes. There. It's in writing. Now maybe it will actually get done.