Life Organizer

What’s the biggest money-waster in your budget – and the easiest to fix? For us, it’s eating out. What’s the worst part of your diet? For us again, it’s eating out. Even when we don’t try very hard to “diet”, we eat pretty healthily at home, but it’s easy to consume 1000+ calories in a single meal at a restaurant without even noticing.

I’m working on getting our records straight to do taxes, and noticed that we have 120 entries totalling $2900 listed under dining out in 2008. I’m not through yet, and that may well include vacation meals and business travel meals, but still… YIKES. How on earth did that happen? It certainly wasn’t PLANNED that way. The majority of that happened on days when I didn’t have a plan, or wasn’t watching the time, and so we ran out for fast food. If we had eaten expensive convenience or gourmet food from the grocery store instead of all that, we could have still saved $1500. If we had prepared a typical meal for our family (mostly scratch), we could have saved $1800. If we had prepared low cost meals at home, we could have saved more than $2000. And the calories! My typical McDonald’s meal (Big N Tasty Burger, Super size fries and a diet Coke) has 1250 calories. My husband’s (double QP with cheese, super fries, large Sprite) has 1490. IN ONE MEAL! What if we had saved 600 calories off of 120 meals through the year? That would be 72,000 calories – more than TWENTY pounds!

Eating out may be good for the economy, but I would rather support the economy through my local grocery store. Wouldn’t you? So here’s my challenge to you – how long can you go without any unplanned dining out? (Planned celebrations don’t count against you, unless you pay with a credit card that has a balance or you go over 1000 calories on the meal!)

Leave comments here to let me know how you’re doing! Today is day 1!

I’m feeling pretty good today! (Ignoring the drippy nose, pfft!) And I’m off to a good start – I remembered to program the coffee maker last night, which helped motivate me to get out of bed on time, and I made cheese muffins before getting the kids up, yum. Dishes are caught up, we’ve listened to the Bible, laundry has been started, kitchen is in acceptable shape, I’ve done 41 minutes on the Wii Fit already, and helped one customer on the phone. We also have stir fry leftovers for lunch, so I don’t even have to think about cooking until tonight.

Most of the inside Christmas decorations have been put up, and the yard stuff won’t take long. Mick rebelled this year and didn’t put lights on the house – I can’t say that I blame him, I didn’t want to fool with that, either. It was a busy month with a lot of illness, that that was just one thing that was a relief to let go. So I spent half an hour with help from the kids and put some lights on PVC over our other yard stuff. That won’t take long to put away, either.

We finally “scored” a great Christmas tree from Hobby Lobby! You know how they mark stuff down after the holidays, and it keeps getting lower and lower as time goes by? For YEARS, we have tried to get one of their trees at a good discount, and keep finding out that we waited too long and they ran out. Well, this year, we got one at 50% off. It’s gorgeous, pre-lit, with pine cones and berries. I *almost* can’t wait until next Christmas. (Just kidding!)

I’m also really happy today because I think I’m totally through feeling icky from chemo – and that was my LAST treatment! Radiation is next, and I have an appointment tomorrow to get the scanning and modeling stuff done.

Is that enough hats to wear? It seems like my life is full enough that if there is more than one crisis, illness, or extra event in a day that I get behind on something, and if it happens several days in a row, EVERYTHING gets so behind it seems almost hopeless. And even after several years of listening to Flylady, though I know her system works, I still WANT to start one thing and finish it. I will be strong today, and tackle all of the impending crises 15 minutes at a time.

I know that sometimes other people want to know just how other people in the same boat are managing, so I’m going to try to log my whole day here.

6:35 got up, only 5 minutes late. Woke up kids, found their jeans and socks in the pile of clean laundry that hasn’t been put up, fed the cats and fish, took meds, drank first 16 oz of water, packed lunches (the kids usually eat breakfast at home and buy lunch at the cafeteria, but they wanted to switch today), signed their papers, made coffee, started laundry.
7:15 kids got on the bus, woke up DH with some difficulty, finished getting dressed, went for a walk (a very hilly mile, took 18 minutes today in some newish hiking boots that shortened my stride – and while I’m making excuses, I had a chemo treatment yesterday, and have had a stomach virus and a cold for days. There, whine over! I’m really being determinedly cheerful today. Here, at least, because it is annoying my husband!) , finally got to enjoy my coffee and listened to the local radio news while writing this so far, updating facebook, and twitter.
8:30 gathered trash, emptied cat box, took trash out, answered the phone, made breakfast
9:10 listened to the daily Bible reading while eating, discussed it with Mick, rebuilt my web page that double checks business receipts because PayPal changed something that broke it, answered a business call, answered a quick IM from someone checking on me, double checked 3 days of receipts
11:00 took a shower, lost a medium sized handful of hair, dried it – another good hair day! (It used to be very thick, and is behaving very well now that half of it is gone.), rebooted the laundry, unloaded and reloaded the DW, visited with my mom and gave her my shopping list, finished my second glass of water, started lunch.
12:30 Ate lunch, played a game of Sudoku, called all of the girl scouts about the rescheduled party and news, finished water #3, whittled email down to 300 in my inbox.
2:00 Rebooted laundry, stripped Timothy’s bed, gathered all the dirty laundry, got inbox down to 286
2:30 Folded 3 loads, made hot tea with honey to get rid of a coughing fit, wrote 9 more Christmas cards, put up the groceries that my mom brought over.
3:15 Picked up Timothy from school, dropped off forms at the counselor’s, went to the post office, took T to Wal-mart to get a birthday present for his friend-who-is-a-girl, stopped by the clinic to admire the flowers I sent my sister for her birthday, brought T home to practice piano and discovered that he left his backpack at school in the pickup area, went back to school but the office was closed and the backpack was gone, got Mick to take T to piano lesson while I picked up the other kids at martial arts, dropped off the last cub scout popcorn order, back home.
5:30 Helped Hannah with piano, called the mom of the birthday girl and arranged picking her up for dinner tonight (T had to miss her party, so we’re all going out tonight instead), helped Jonathan with piano, wrapped present, started today’s embroidery newsletter, picked up T from piano, picked up the friend, went out to dinner. Two more glasses of water!
8:15 back home, got younger two kids ready for bed, got them to put up their folded clothes, read to them, fed the critters, sorted and rebooted the laundry, finished newsletter.
9:50 about to take meds and go to bed!

Why is it that I don’t seem to have a “mode” other than crisis or lazybone? Last Tuesday, I worked my tail off all day long and managed to have the house reasonably presentable as well as plan a girl scout meeting. I’ve been in lazy mode ever since! Oh, I’ve accomplished SOME things, but I have piles of dishes, laundry, paperwork, and 177 messages in my inbox right now – a whole bunch of them from customers who need my help.

Today, I’m trying to get myself into a new mode – “blessing”. Flylady talks about housework blessing the family, and she’s totally right, IMHO. So instead of daily tasks encroaching on time spent on selfish pleasure (I REALLY want to play a computer game!), I’m going to focus on how much better my family and I feel with clean dishes, clothes in our drawers, and for me, happy customers and an emptier inbox.

I got my first gold star on Sunday since APRIL. I don’t think my to-do lists are all that packed and unreasonable, I’ve just been that behind for that long. I posted in April about how cookie season knocked me for a loop… well, I hadn’t recovered from that when all of the spring and end-of-school-year activities hit, followed by “camping month”. Taking my girls troop camping and being a unit leader at day camp were very rewarding experiences, and I’m glad I did those things, but my home and business have suffered. I’m slowly catching up now, though. For the last five days, all of the dishes have gotten done, pretty much after every meal, and the clean laundry is caught up.

Now of course, I have another “crisis” or sorts… upcoming vacation. I can’t enjoy myself knowing I have to come home to a mess, so I have to make some major progress before then!

Baby steps, baby steps. If I can just keep making those baby steps and not get overwhelmed at the big picture, I’ll be okay.

My first girl scout cookie season knocked me for a loop. I think next year will go better, because I got more organized about it as we went along – and maybe I’ll get better at delegating! Our sale was really successful, and it was totally worth it, but oh how glad I am that it’s over! Final paperwork was turned in yesterday, woohoo! No more weekend booths, counting cookies and money, taking cookies everywhere I went, hauling cases of them back and forth from the van.

I realized today that the last time I cleaned the kids’ rooms was September. They do okay on their own for a while after I’ve been in there, but then too many things get out of place and they get as overwhelmed as I do. Ugh.

So now I have several competing crises again, but I’m determined to get out of crisis mode. I’m going to work on everything for a little while today. The laundry was caught up on Saturday, which was a major victory! Mick got the lawn mower fixed and front yard mowed (with 8YO Timothy’s help!) over the weekend. That feels good, even though it wasn’t my personal victory. The kids seem to be wanting to help more lately, though it isn’t always with the things that I really want and need for them to do. Remember the Bible story about Naaman? He had leprosy and was told by Elisha to wash in the river Jordan. He was angry at this, perhaps because he was expecting to be told to do a “big thing”, and something that simple was beneath him. My kids like to do “grown up work” – big things that they may not be ready for, but they don’t seem to want to bend down and pick up all the little stuff on the floor that hurts my back. I guess the trick is to get them trained to do the big and little things before they lose all enthusiasm. Any advice? In our old house, which had carpet, somehow I convinced them that vacuuming was totally fun, so the kid who picked up the most toys got the longest turn with the vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately, sweeping the hardwood isn’t quite as appealing.

I’m not too down on my kids for being that way, because aren’t we all? We want to do the important things that are admired and full of glory, and who ever got praised for picking up the socks from underneath the kitchen table? LOL

Woohoo, I think I like the look of my new blog. Now, to get some posts made!

Once again, I find myself pondering the huge number of Really Important Things That I Need to Do, And Right Now. Clean the floors, prepare the next girl scout meeting, sell cookies, help the kids with homework, cub scout activities, piano lessons, UIL Music Memory contest, work on this web site, work on the Stitchery Mall web site, buy groceries, pay bills, plan menus, exercise… If I dropped everything to concentrate on any one of them for a whole day or two, then I could really feel some progress – and that’s good, right? But then everything else would REALLY go to pot, and they’re important too (else they wouldn’t be on that RITTINDARN list)

Operating in Crisis Mode just sticks a band-aid on one thing, or maybe two. It doesn’t really help, though. So once more, I’m re-committing to baby-stepping my way through everything, and doing a little bit of everything every day.

Oh yeah, and I’m giving up my puzzle site until after 8 PM. *sigh* There, I said it out loud. Now I have to do it! LOL!

So how about you? Are you having trouble getting out of crisis mode, too? Is there a precious time-waster that you need to give up or limit?