10 Things Tuesday- An Introduction

The idea behind "10 Things Tuesday" is to do a bullet-point-style blog about whatever is on my mind, or essentially, what's going on in my life this week. These can be things I'm thankful for, prayer requests I have, questions I'm pondering, 10 things I'm doing this week, 10 tasks that need to be done... you get the idea. It's a way to just post quickly and record/share what's going on without writing out a novel of a blog post.

So for today, I want to share 10 things I'm doing to organize my life and house:

1. I am trying to start in one part of the house and go room-by-room, de-cluttering as I go. Today, I started with the kitchen...
2. I organized the cupboard full of food so that like items were together.
3. I cleared off the counters and microwave and on top of the fridge. These are places that accumulate miscellaneous items.
4. One major problem area is all of our papers and mail that tend to pile up on the counter. While I have sorted through these papers many times, I never actually finish the process. So, I threw out all of the trash/junk paper and organized the bills and other important papers (like paycheck stubs) into binders.
5. When we moved in July, I had begun sorting through papers and ended up filling a tote full of mail and papers. This has not been sorted since and has been piled in a stack of boxes in our bedroom closet. Today I opened the tote and began to do the same with all of these papers as I did with the others.
6. I made a shelf on the bookshelf in our desk area to hold all of my important "business" stuff. I compiled all of my event planning curriculum that I haven't started together so that it is easy to access. I added the binders full of bills and paycheck stubs as well as our medical records to the shelf. All of my envelopes are there too. And printer paper and labels finish off the shelf.
7. I am in the process of creating my own household binder, where I have a planner, tools for cleaning, cooking, and the activities in my life.
8. I am going through all of both boys' old clothes and Josiah's toys to donate at the swap meet we are having at MOPS this Thursday. This eliminates clothes that neither boy will ever wear again and toys that Josiah doesn't play with or need anymore.
9. I plan to rotate Josiah's toys so that some baskets are in his bedroom closet where he cannot reach them and some are in the living room on a bookshelf where he has constant access to them. These will rotate every week so that he can play with them all without having them all on the floor at once.
10. Lastly, for this list at least, I created these weekday posts for my blog so that I have direction in what I can/need to share on my blog. It helps me to post about different subjects throughout the week, including many of the various things I am involved in or care about.