Give Yourself the Gift of Productivity

Christmas is coming! You know what that means. No matter what phase of life you are in, there will be some extra length of time away from your normal schedule. Dare I suggest it, but this could be a time to create a new norm rather than let everything fall to pieces. Because, unless you are leaving your house in perfect order before going out of town, chances are you still have to function in your house over the holidays. There is also the possibility of extended house guests! In the best of holiday circumstances it can still be hard to retain your sanity, specifically as a homemaker (this is my realm and -probably- that of my audience).

I only recently stumbled upon Fun, Cheap, or Free by Jordan Page thanks to the video that popped in my YouTube feed this morning when I went looking for an aerobic workout. I was inspired and thought it was worth a share.

The video is of Jordan's "Block Schedule". I've already been trying to loosely base my day on hour-long segments. Jordan suggests breaking your day into 3 hour blocks. Watching the video, I realized that my day is already broken into very similar blocks to the ones she describes in her day. The "ah ha" for me was the consistency of putting corresponding activities in the same parts of the day throughout the week.

I took notes on her set up, which was good, because, although her site provides a printable, it is a fill-in-yourself page (located at the bottom of the page). So here is my reproduction of Jordan's schedule which I will follow with my slightly shifted version.

(Pardon the small font.)  Jordan has school-age kids, so their activities are a big part of her day. Mine are still under school-age, which lightens my load up... for now. I must say, nap time is my favorite time. It's Me time. I'm writing during nap time right now. 

Edits aside, I'm happy to keep those couple of cleaning sessions in my schedule. This has not been my strong suit. I'm a minimal house keeper. A couple of speed cleaning sessions, when planned on, will be a great way to up my cleaning game. It's amazing what you can get done in less than a half hour. I'm going to run an experiment. I'm pretty sure if I push myself, I think I could vacuum my whole house in under 30 minutes... Stay tuned for that. I have to wait for my boys to wake up on their own first.

....

Success! Three levels, seven rooms, and two poopy post-nap diapers changed, all in less than 25 minutes! Minus stairs and switching plugs, the actual vacuuming took only 15 minutes. This is the power of the focused use of timers and simple FOCUS. This is something we're trying to teach our boys: tasks take a lot less time if you just DO them without extra wandering and playing around.

Another thing I'm happy Mrs. Page emphasized is the importance of blocking in your sleep. Even she admits to being a "night owl", which is what I naturally lean towards as well. The fact is that being a night owl doesn't mean you actually need less sleep. For me, at least, it just means that the sleep is shifted so I get the same amount. If I get to bed late, I wake up late... especially when pregnant. Fortunately, during my last pregnancy my boys sweetly let me sleep. They played quietly until I got up to feed them. If screaming happened... well, that was an effective alarm clock. So, in the last year I've tried very hard to get to bed earlier on a consistent basis, weekends exempted (Charles does breakfast those days). I've even made (small) steps toward getting up earlier to get through my opening routines before the "hangry" screaming kicks in now.

These blocks are a great way to plan your day. It ticks all the boxes while allowing plenty of individuality. The idea of using focused chunks of time instead of micromanaged hours is very freeing. Adding in some alarms is very useful for keeping on-task without wasting time watching a clock. Jordan suggests setting additional alarms for 15 minutes before the end of a block. This is great for facilitating transitions. An additional thought I had with those last 15 minutes is that if you get everything done before that timer, then those in-between minutes could be "phone check" times. Jordan makes a point of being "unplugged" for the bulk of the day. I'm fine with that, but I think using those optional couple of minutes kind of as a reward for getting things done. Delayed gratification can be a wonderful thing.

Now for the Holiday Bonus Round. Jordan showed an alternate example schedule of a working mom in her video. I feel that the following tip should be very handy for holiday prep in general. For office work, Jordan suggested using the morning working hours for the more brain-engaged tasks and the afternoon for moving/physical tasks. I'll let you decide which holiday tasks are brain vs. body oriented. The point is to use the fresh morning energy for your alert brain and then be moving in the afternoon to get through any post-lunch slump you experience.

I'd encourage you to watch the full video to gain your own insights and then use that printable to your advantage. Happy Holiday Blocking!

7 Habits for a Highly Effective Summer

Hello Summer!

And also hello and no school! Which means kids are home and routines are going out the window. (As a T4 who loves routines and structure, this is breaking my brain.)  I have the added element of being married to a teacher, so he is home as well and is wanting to be in relaxing mode the whole time, which makes it harder for me to be doing my job as mommy and homemaker.

Fortunately I took the Home and Family Management class at BYU-I where Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for Highly Effective People was our textbook. It has been five years since then, so I have been feeling ready for a review anyway, and this ts the perfect time to share as we take on this season.

We'll start with the image that represents the 7 Habits and how they flow together, below.

I love how the goal of the Habits is to raise us to a higher level of living through personal and interpersonal growth. It's fun to then apply this format to different realms within our circles of influence. I've already worked on putting a Cub Scout spin on it (that may be September's post), but right now I'm needing to put this into practice in my home. That would be the point of learning this whole process in the Home and Family Management class to begin with.

With the Habits being split as Private and Public, I find it easy to replace those labels with Mommy and Family. This works because as a Mommy (or leader of any kind) you'll want to get yourself in order first so you can operate from a place of confidence and order, which is what the first three Habits focus on.

The First Habit is "Be Proactive". To paraphrase what is on the website, being proactive is taking responsibility for our own choices including our responses to life, to be "response-able" if you will. For me, this means pulling on my Big Girl Pants and actually being ready to be The Mom. 

The opposite of proactive is reactive. As a mom, I'd rather be ahead of the game and running things rather than have things running me. In daily life this looks like taking care of things before they become problems you have to react to, usually in an emotional way. An example of this can be as simple as making sure everyone is fed before anyone has the chance to get "hangry" which leads to everyone yelling at everybody else.

So, the first step here is getting into the mindset of "I can do this!" In other words, we are using faith in ourselves that things will work out if we put forth the initial effort to get on top of things. The next part is identifying our Circles of Influence, meaning the things we can actually take care of and affect. This saves us from using our energy to worry about things outside of our control. For me a great example of this is that I don't worry about politics at all. That is what Charles is for ;) 

My other notes under being proactive are: keep commitments, don't judge (those other people are outside of your Circle of Concern so don't be worrying about them), be a model, and be part of the solution.

The Second Habit is "Begin with the End in Mind". This is something that I'm pretty good at. For me, I can see the big picture, or at least solid glimpses of it, and some of the steps in how to get the results I am wanting. That is the beginning of this habit. You have to know where you are headed in order to plan out the steps of how to get there. Here we start the process of creating our lives. Mr. Covey suggests creating a personal Mission Statement at this point to help give yourself direction before moving ahead.

To create your own Mission Statement there are a few things to keep in mind: What are your principles that you base your life around? What are your roles? And what are your goals?

In exploring those topics, I just wrote my own mission statement out. So that will be my next post,

which saves me space here.

The Third Habit is "Put First Things First". Here is where action comes into play. After the first two

Habits we should be feeling empowered (#1) with a road map (#2) at least in a general sense. Now

we use that power to move forward in the direction of our mission. The quest has begun! (Sorry, I

married a nerd and it's had almost seven years to be rubbing off on me.)

The important thing about this forward movement is to make sure it is in a forward direction, hence

"first things first". It may seem redundant on paper, but think about how easily we distract ourselves

from actually being as productive as we know we can be? I know I have fallen into this trap. That is

the reason I'm revisiting this whole program is to get myself out of such a rut of diverted stagnation.

Habit 3's war cry is "PRIORITIZE!!!!!" And they provided a spectrum format to help us with that,

below.

The intention behind this is that we should spend the majority of our time in Quadrant 2 where things

are important but not urgent. This is where proactivity lives. Quadrant 1 is Reaction Zone. I tend to

avoid Quadrant 3 which is why my email inbox drives Charles crazy. None of the emails I get need

any sort of immediate action, so I only take enough time to mark them as read just to make the

notifications go away. Quadrant 4 has been my vice, but I am getting better at managing that. I'm

writing instead of playing Minecraft, enough said.

The application of this system of spending more of our time in Quadrant 2 is to use those planning

skills from Habit 2 to schedule things out. Remembering to connect to our Mission Statement, you

identify the "big rocks" you need to focus on to accomplish the important goals and plot them out

first. Everything else, all the "little things", then can be organized around what time is left. That is the

step I want to work more on for myself. (Structure=Good)

That wraps up the Private/Mommy/Leader half of the Habits. Onto the Public/Family/Organization

Habits.

Habit 4 is "Think Win/Win". This is where the rubber meets the road. It's great to be doing all the

private deep thinking of setting goals and making plans, but then you have to set all those wonderful

designs into motion... with other people involved.

I know at school, most of us probably preferred to do "Group Projects" alone. We can't do that in the

real world.

To explain this win-win mindset, I'm going to pull a quote from the Covey website:

"Win-win sees life as a cooperative arena, not a competitive one. Win-win is a frame of mind and

heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win-win means agreements

or solutions are mutually beneficial and satisfying. We both get to eat the pie, and it tastes pretty

darn good! "

To illustrate this with a relevant biographical example, I'll put this in the terms that I used for my Cub Scout group. The boys come to Scouts with their "win" of having fun and (hopefully) learning something. As a leader, I come with the "win" of being able to present the material I have prepared to teach and guide these prepubescent males.

To make this a cooperative win-win situation, I have to put forth effort to make my material "fun" (not my strong suit, but I can default to being dramatic at least) and the boys have to reign in their energy enough to respectfully listen to and participate appropriately to the instructions/discussion/activity. If that goes smoothly we can have a positive experience where they aren't bored and I'm not wasting time and getting frustrated with ... shepherding their exuberant interruptions (read: telling them to "shut up!" every ten seconds).

I can happily report that I have seen success with this arrangement with this group of boys, which is beneficial for my sanity seeing how I teach this same bunch of boys' Sunday School class.

How did I achieve this success? I imposed Habit 5 on them: "Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood". I made sure they understood my expectations of our interactions. (I recently introduced them to the metaphor of the carrot and the stick...)

If Habit 4 is about cooperation, then Habit 5 is about communication. The actual emphasis is on empathetic listening. This is a surprisingly useful skill, even when parenting toddlers (assuming they have sufficient language skills or you can interpret their intentions).

My biggest application of this, particularly when issues are arising and my children entering fussy territory. Instead of just listening to what they are complaining about on the surface with their actual words, I try to be in tune enough to intuit what the root problem they are dealing with. I try to understand what is going on inside of them, probably better than they do in the moment. Depending on the circumstances, I either "suggest" they leave the situation to get out of that energetic space and we can talk about it later (time out) or I bring them into a hug right then before addressing the surface concerns. Sometimes my little boy just needs to get some "sads" out, then we can rescript the situation so we don't have that current problem again.

Once cooperation and communication are established, then we can begin to "Synergize", which is Habit 6. The innovation that can come from the healthy background that all the other Habits have set up can be mind-blowing. This is truly a situation of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I think the secret behind this is the humility and confidence that have grown out of the other steps of this process. We have confidence in our own abilities and ideas but are still humble enough to work together to combine ideas to make something new that can work for everyone (win-win).

In the parenting format I can imagine an example of this being involving our kids when planning out routines or schedules or codes of conduct. When the kids are engaged in these processes they are more likely to respect them. Don't be afraid of this step; they may have ideas that will surprise you. Of course, this is more applicable with older children, but even little ones can at least make the planning stage more... entertaining with their input. (At 10:00 we slay the dragons!)

Our last Habit is "Sharpen the Saw". This is my second favorite Habit because I am a big fan of self-care. I have a firm testimony that I am not the best Momma I can be if I don't have the pieces of my inner puzzle all in the right order. A consistent pattern of this is when I don't get "enough" sleep then I turn into a "Mombie" and I don't use caffeine to combat the effects, so watch out!

Those "puzzle pieces" that need tending to, and ways to maintain performance in those areas, are:

•  Physical: Beneficial eating, exercising, and resting
• Social/Emotional: Making social and meaningful connections with others
• Mental: Learning, reading, writing, and teaching
• Spiritual: Spending time in nature, expanding spiritual self through meditation, music, art, prayer, or service

I know I am still working on finding a good balance of all of these myself. The great part is that this

Habit is taken into consideration back in Habit 3. These activities are contained within Quadrant 2.

And that wraps up my rather long summary of the 7 Habits. I'd encourage you to follow the links to

the Covey website to learn more. I'll end with a little infographic that has a much more concise

review with added applications and affirmations. I'm feeling inspired. I hope you are too.

May we all have the best summer ever!

Opening and Adding to My Virtual Time Capsule

Happy (belated) New Year! Many apologies for not adding much to the blog-verse in 2017. My excuse: I was too bus adding some adorable-ness to the world at large = I made a baby girl instead of writing. Basically I was either too nauseous, too tired, or too busy taking care of my boys with the little oomph I had to spare for most of the year. Julianna was born in October and then it was the holiday season; not a great time to try picking up blogging again.

But now we are a month into 2018 and I'm ready to get back at it.

In getting the juices flowing, I've redesigned the look and direction of the blog (hope you like it) and read some of my old posts to remember what my voice sounds like (when I'm saying more than, "Share with your brother," or "Please let the baby sleep!)

Looking back at my post last year to ring in the new year I saw that I had been proud of completing a mini bucket list to prepare for my 25th birthday. The idea behind that was that 25 is my favorite number and I wanted it to be a banner year. I'd say I succeeded; 2017 was a pretty good year. In my brain it is divided into Pregnant or Not Pregnant and Nauseous or Not Nauseous.

In January I was Not Yet Pregnant and I experienced my first foot zoning session. (It's so nice being a massage therapist and being able to exchange. I'm also open to bartering.) It was quite validating to be told that my energies were generally good and that I was clearing some generational patterns.

I found out I was Pregnant in February and had a brief Not Nauseous period to enjoy getting excited and start hoping it was a girl this time.

Then the Nauseous time began. Instead of being just a first trimester thing, it was more of a first half sort of thing. And it was worse this time than it was with my two boys. That was my first clue that it was either a girl or twins. My cousin gave birth to twins at the beginning of the year, so that really did feel like a possibility. It was quite a relief to see only one Jelly Bean in the first ultrasound.

Despite being Nauseous, I managed to get my little massage business set up again and continue practicing. Massage actually proved a decent distraction. This is also my second pregnancy where I ended up doing some serious singing. With Jon it was being in the back-up choir for a production of The Pirates of Penzance with the University Choir at BYU-I. This time it was a community choir Easter production of Handel's Messiah. The performance was towards the end of the overall Nauseous stretch, but I did finally cave in and ask for a Zofran prescription because I wasn't taking any chances of having to miss the performance, and my last minute solo. It worked so we will remember to get that at the beginning in future rounds.

The highlight of the Not Nauseous term was our summer trip. It wasn't as involved as our month-long road trip in 2016, which was nice. We took a train over to Denver to see Charles' brother and a train museum that was featuring Thomas the Tank Engine. Plus there was small petting zoo. Overall, it was a win-win. The boys had fun (trains... enough said) and they were pretty well-behaved the whole time. The train was a great idea. We didn't have to keep the boys in car seats so they were able to wiggle a bit and stretch out better for sleeping purposes. I'd highly recommend it as a mode of log-distance travel. We need more trains.

And then October came to end the Pregnant round and Julianna was born! Yeah for having a little girl. I was hoping she'd come while I was still 25. She cut it close. Her birthday is 10/10 and mine is 10/19.

I've joked with the nurses at her appointments that maybe I should have named her Mary Poppins because I think she is Practically Perfect in Every Way :) She does everything she is supposed to although I'm starting to create a theory that each new baby grows faster than the last. She will be 4 months in about a week and I just had to switch her clothes to the 6-9 months size. But she has a smile to match. My little angel.

To end this reminiscing, I'd like to just mention that my only official "resolution" for 2017 was to read more. Period. I listen to plenty of audio books, but I desired a return to the written page. I'll say that I succeeded in reading more than I have in a while. I finished a series (although it took most of the year).

This year I am expanding on that decision and have tasked myself with a reading list of some of the Classics. I took a Facebook quiz last year that revealed how many "classics" I had read. I felt I needed to add the stories that have been made into movies I've seen to get a decent score. That was humbling. So to give myself a bit of an ego boost I sifted through our shelves to find some of the titles that I have missed. I managed to fill an entire shelf.

So far I have finished The Picture of Dorian Gray which I had started back when I was weaning David. I felt I had to start there because I am a self-proclaimed Finisher. Now I am reading The Iliad. I recently watched the Myths and Monsters series on Netflix which referenced several stories from Homer. They were already on my list, but watching the show bumped them up in my time line. I think I'll kind go at this list in a chronological-ish order.

Hopefully 2018 will be filled with both reading and writing (but not necessarily great amounts of 'rithmetic). 

The Continuing Journey: Maryann's Closet Round 3

Since Memorial Day, Maryann has been able to enjoy her remodeled closet. After Round 1, I had gotten most of Maryann's clothes sorted by Type. When she moved into her new closet she mixed things up a little but had her blouses sorted mostly separated into two blocks of mostly pink and blue. She called her top section of pinks her "happy clothes". 

With Round 2, I facilitated a joint sorting venture using a simple 1 to 10 rating system. Something from an old Carol Tuttle video has stuck with the me and inspires me still. She said something to the effect of we should wear clothes that make us happy. In the rating system this translates to wearing only 7s and higher, with the aim of filling your closet with mostly 10s. This is an idea that is probably in the new Carol videos, but as part of the Lifestyle subscription content that I don't have yet.

So, in this sorting phase, I did the heavy lifting and let Maryann tell me which pile to put the items into. This worked really well since she was feeling a bit under the weather anyway. Happily, we were able to find a good pile of 10s and a substantial pile of 7s in her Type 1 colors to work into a capsule wardrobe in our next round. Here are her tops. See how happy they look!

There was still a hefty pile of off-type clothes that she wasn't quite ready to part with. But we also eliminated about 50% of what she had hung up in her closet in this round. What an amazing amount of purging!

A lot of what we got rid of were Type 3 clothes. She'd already been chipping away at those in the months since Round 1 on her own which was great. She we also able to identity a lot of items that she hadn't worn in a while due to fit and whatnot. 

We were also able to identify a lot of themes in what she likes to shop for so she can continue to find those things in her bright happy colors. Maryann is a big fan of paisley, lace overlays, stitched embellishments, tie dye, and the colors pink, purple, and oceany shades of blue and green. The styles she gravitates toward include peasant tops, button-ups (for riding horses), and blouses with the high-low feature.

 

It was fortunate that I had all four Style Guides to show Maryann so that she could see what I see when I differentiate between the different color families. She was also able to read the backs of them and get more familiar​ with the styles that will support her Type 1 nature.

We found a lot of great basic pieces along with a lot of fun patterns that will be really fun to mix and match. I hope Maryann will have a lot of fun exploring these options. I was able to show her a couple of combinations that she hadn't thought of before that got her excited about this next phase of utilizing her clothes in new ways. I think she's even interested in buying her own DYT course so she can have her own copy of the color cards to shop with. 

In the couple of weeks since this latest transformation, Maryann has been in a very normal regrouping phase. She lost a lot of her old outfit combinations, so she's had to stretch a bit in putting new looks together. As a Type 1, she feels the loss of that 50% decrease in items, but she also feels lighter. Plus, some of the 7s have become new 10s.

To help her feel better about the purging process, I told her about the 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle). In closet terms, this means we wear 20% of the items 80% of the time. What we did was eliminate a chunk of the unworn 80% so she could have better access to the 20%.

If you are interested in buying your own DYT course and feel that I have helped inspire that, please use my referral link to start that process. 

In the meantime I'd encourage you to "shop" in your own closets and sift out the items that don't make you happy for whatever reason. Why spend any time in clothes that don't make you feel great? Who knows, you may even rediscover pieces that can be worn in new and exciting ways that you hadn't thought of before. That almost feels the same as getting something brand new from a store right there. 

Bonus Feature: Remember those Type 3 clothes Maryann was able to release? I took a bunch of them for another friend. Once I got them home I played with them and made a capsule out of what was there.

This capsule is more like a 10 Item Wardrobe, but it would be a great base for a Project 333 wardrobe. It has 3 skirts, 2 vests, and 4 blouses. Just add some jeans, a couple more tops, and accessories and it is set.

Ring in the New Year with Self-Celebration: Instead of Self-Criticism

Happy New Year! We survived! That feels like something big after all that happened in 2016. Unless you were living under a rock. Lucky you.

'Tis the season of Resolution Making. I'm sure we already have our generic goals on our minds that we despair of accomplishing.

What a great way to begin a new year. Not!

Instead of being a downer and focusing on all the things we sucked at this past year, I'd like to break the pattern and celebrate what was great about my year and I encourage you to turn your thoughts in a similarly positive direction.

Started My First Blog

 

After ending my formal education two years ago, I haven't had much reason to stretch my writing muscles. Putting words together to form thoughts to share was something that I've kind of prided myself on probably since middle school. So ending my hiatus was something I'm really proud of.

In eight (or seven since December didn't really count) I have published 23 posts, gotten almost 1500 pageviews, and someone in  France is reading this, which is really exciting for me since I have a mental love affair with French-ness in general. So, merci.

Have I been great on my consistency? Not really. Do I hope to get better at that this year? Yes, but I allow life to happen as it will in this respect. I figure as long as I stay passionate about this project, then it will continue. I hope that will be a long while and will be a growing experience we share.

Survived First Big Road Trip with Babies

 

With two under three, in a small car, with no AC, and a month on the road visiting family and seeing sights, this was a big thing to accomplish. Somehow we didn't die. We lived instead. We had some amazing experiences. My favorites were the Devil's Punchbowl Beach in Oregon and the Monterrey Aquarium, hands down.

I don't know how much Jon will remember in the long run on his own, but he loves looking at our pictures from this adventure. I'm sure we will do more traveling in the future. Just maybe not so much this year. (We're hoping to save up to go to England in two years.)

Celebrated 5th Wedding Anniversary

 

In this modern age when the family and marriage institutions are under attack, it's another big thing that we are still together and going strong. Currently the average length of a marriage before divorce is eight years. So we are technically passed the halfway point of the statistic, but I think we'll make it far beyond that point.

Being part of the LDS religion, we truly believe in eternal marriages and sealed family units. I think this means that we don't go into this big commitment without serious thought and prayer and open eyes. I know in our case, at least from my side, I married Charles knowing that I was going to fall in love with him to a much greater extent than I did during our (very short) courtship through the course of our married life. I think I was lucky to have seen that in my own parents' relationship. That laid a very healthy foundational expectation of love and marriage. I know not everyone is blessed in such a way, and that is an unfortunate contributor to a lot of our current social problems.

This is not to say that everything is always rose-colored and smooth sailing in the Horikami household, but I can confidently say that our problems are pretty small in the grand scheme of things. We see our occasional upsets as growing experiences rather than deal breakers. We know that we married imperfect beings while being imperfect ourselves. We are on  a journey of growth together. (In rough nerd-speak:) What is a quest without challenges? Such a quest could not be as fulfilling when the destination is reached as one that is fraught with dangers overcome along the way.

Completed a Mini Bucket List

 

This was a journey I shared with you. I set my goals here. And then I reported on them in order (one, two and three, four, five). Please read those it you missed them.

I'd say it's a pretty thing to be able to say that I accomplished that which I set out to do. Am I perfect at all of those things? Not really. I'm still human.

So, here's an update: I'd say I'm ready to take my exercise routine to the next level. The holiday season has left me wanting to do another Whole30 (surprise, surprise), I'm really not worried about my face any more. I've mastered makeup application more so you can hardly notice my blemished when I "have my face on". And I'm really ready to take on the Martha challenges now that my wall cleaning project is done and the holidays are over.

So life is going pretty good. Maybe I'll make another bucket list, but not as a series of resolutions at this time. Right now I'm choosing to focus on my blessings more than on short-comings that I think need improvement.

Don't get me wrong, self-improvement is great, but I think it should be more of an on-going personal journey that isn't dependent on what day of the year it is.

Now it's your turn. Take a moment to think on what was great for you in 2016. Maybe leave a comment if there's something you're really proud of that you'd like to share.

May 2017 bring you new hope, new possibilities, and new adventures!

Time to Try Minimalism: A Project 333 Experiment

As a Type 4, minimalism is something that is supposed to come naturally in theory. In practice, the habits and accumulations of life lead to stuff building up.

I've read the purging challenges of the Mary and Martha book. Sarah Mae doesn't go into any depth about purging your wardrobe, but I felt that was a natural place for me to begin anyway.

I've had thoughts of doing a capsule wardrobe percolating in the back of my mind for some time now, and so I have now begun. I've heard of the 10 Item Wardrobe, but my lifestyle doesn't match wanting to do laundry more than twice a week and my little bit of Type 1 balks at having so few options to rotate through. And as I've looked more at this system, it seems a little confusing to me to only have 10 core items and then extras. So I've settled on an extended version of the Project 333 format. Project 333 means going 3 months with only 33 items, including clothing, accessories, and outerwear. This seems easier than deciding what constitutes a core item or an extra. Project 333 kind of lumps things together and counts everything (except pajamas, workout clothes, and lounge wear, which are all the same for me). I've stretched it a tad. I may be closer to 40 items. I justify this by saying it's winter, so I have an extra coat to count and then I had a hard time narrowing down my jewelry choices.

In choosing my items I used the Vivienne Files All Seasons Packing format as a starting point keeping this post about color schemes in mind. I kept to a concise selection of black, white, cobalt, teal, and red. It's a beautiful thing really. I'm only a week into my 3 months, but I'm still having fun making different outfit combinations.

Here is my new closet and the color palette broken down.

 

So simple and so Type 4. I'm sure more refining will happen and there are some gaps I'd like to fill while keeping a "one in, one out" mindset. But already I'm loving how streamlined my outfit making has become. Dressing Your Truth got me to one level of clarity with keeping only one color family on hand, but Project 333 and pared it down even more.

I really like the Project 333 motto of "Be more with less". I'm hoping to carry that through more of my life in the coming months as I follow through on doing the Martha challenges.

Let me know what you think and Enjoy this holiday season!

5 of My Most "Grat-ifying" Affirmations

Back in September, Carol Tuttle invited her community to join her in focusing on a theme of loving the life you have and using a script of daily affirmations to help you love your life more or to begin loving the life you have if you were struggling with that. I don't do anything with hashtags, but I joined the challenge and that was how I started my day during the whole month of September.

I've decided to take up that script again because I felt that the biggest benefit from going through this list of affirmations was that it inspired a spirit of gratitude. It being November now, this seems appropriate with Thanksgiving coming up and all. Granted, I definitely believe that we should always go about life with a spirit of gratitude, but this is a fine time to give it some extra focus.

Not all of the affirmations listed start with "I love..." which can easily be switched to "I'm grateful that..." but I think each could still be altered to reflect a greater level of gratitude. 

The full list has 23 affirmations. But 23 is not a pretty number in my world, so I've been able to distill that full list down to my favorite five which is much better. (Five is the square root of my favorite number, 25. Yeah, I'm weird like that in playing with number patterns wherever I can.)

So here goes my short list with my revisions to make them into personalized gratitude statements.

• It's as if the universe knows who I am and what I want and things flow to me in such a timely way. 
• I am grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows me individually and answers my prayers, spoken and unspoken, to bring me the things I need when I need them, even when I hadn't realized I was going to need it ahead of time.
• I am grateful for the spiritual support and the angelic help that is taking care of the details and is making sure that this day is going to unfold in a magical way.
• I am grateful for my angels (seen and unseen) that help protect me ad mine and their help in making my day go smoothly.
• The people who come to me are benefiting from their exposure to me. And I am thankful for all the wonderful people in my life.
• I am grateful for all the wonderful people in my life and I am grateful for the opportunities to grow in my own talents as I go about serving and interacting with them.
• I love connecting with the infinite power and knowledge of my life.
• I am grateful for my spiritual gifts and talents that help empower me in shaping the life I choose to live. 
• I love my life!
• I am grateful for the safe and dependable job of my husband that facilitates our needs and reasonable wants being met and that it allows for me to be at home to be the mother of our children. 

I hope this in some way inspires a greater spirit of gratitude in your own life and I would encourage you to check out the full list of Carol's affirmations and go through this same exercise of making them into your own "grat-ifying" statements.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Bucket List Report Item Five: And My Inspirations for Living a More Uncluttered Life

This one is obviously going to be a life-long process, but I feel like I have been making some really good efforts in cleaning up my external and internal spaces lately. So I consider this item of my bucket list as being closer to mastery then it was six months ago.

I believe the big reason behind my success has been that we have been able to settle into a reliable routine. The funny thing is that we got to this point in a rather organic way. But I recently began reading through and do the challenges in Having a Martha Home the Mary Way by Sarah Mae. The basis of this book is having a more spiritual motivation behind your homemaking efforts. It is a 31 day challenge I guess you could call it. I'm only on Day 6 but I feel like I'm benefiting from the Mary challenges already. (I haven't started doing the Martha challenges yet because I'm already in the middle of a different cleaning assignment I've given myself of washing all our walls.)

Day 3 was actually about establishing a workable routine. I don't feel a need to change much of our current routine (other than my own bedtimes and wake-up times), but I still like what Sarah had to say about not seeing my routine as an hour-by-hour schedule and thinking in terms of "anchors" instead. These anchors are the activities that consistently happen everyday at about the same time. For us (and most people) these include meal times and (for our stage of life with little ones) nap time. (David is finally making the transition to just one nap at about the same time as Jon. I am soooooo excited!)

My point here is that having a routine in place helps tremendously with a level of mental clutter for me. I don't have to worry about what I need to do during any given day. I just focus on what I can do in working around the anchors of our day.

The next level of mental clutter elimination is the omnipresent To Do list. No joke, this is the best secret weapon for getting anything done. Now, not everyday gets a full list for me, but when I need it, I sure use it. Sarah Mae's Day 5 actually talked about this as well, but she takes it the next level. The big piece of advice she gives comes from Ivy Lee's Six List from the 1920s. Instead of writing down everything that you could possibly do in one day, you write down the six most important things you want to get done the next day the night before. Talk about decluttering if the To Do list is getting streamlined as well.

On the days that do have more going on or more that needs to get done, I've already been making ample use of my white board in the kitchen to make To Do lists. It helps me get the big picture of my day out of my head and into a visual form which then makes my head feel less cluttered. Sometimes I have to make these lists for the day the night before just so I can go to sleep without those thoughts running in circles in my head in an effort to not be forgotten in the morning. I really need to just get a small notebook and pen for my bedside table. I just haven't gotten around to that yet.This is probably because I don't need it all that often, but it would be nice knowing it was there anyway.

Now that the inner realms feel less cluttered it's time to address areas of physical clutter that I've been able to get under control. In Lessons from Madame Chic by Jennifer Scott there is a chapter entitled "Clutter Is So Not Chic". It contains this definition of what clutter is:

Clutter is an accumulation of miscellaneous things that do not belong where they currently are.

I think Jennifer goes more into detail in talking about clutter "hot spots" in her other Madame Chic books, but they are basically any spot that ends up accumulating clutter like a little magnet because of location and convenience. I've been able to tame some of my hot spots.

My big examples are the top of my bedroom dresser and my entire craft room. A month or two ago the top of my dresser was just driving me crazy. I had several baskets containing odds and ends and they were getting close to overflowing and I realized that I really didn't need all of that stuff out at all. So I attacked! I kept out only the very basics of my toiletries that I use every day (lotions and scents, mostly) and I couple of other items I like to have easy access to (nail trimmers and a file and a couple other things). I then went the next step and made it pretty, because why not? It is so nice having a tidy surface to greet me whenever I get anything out of my drawers or just when I'm passing through when going about my day.

My craft room was another space that had just gotten ridiculous to the point where I wouldn't want to actually use the room for its intended purpose. I had boxes of stuff covering my craft table and things just weren't where they needed to belong. Plus the feng shui was just off with how the big items were arranged anyway.

So, after a solid day I was able to get the boxes consolidated and in the closet, got the tables switched around (the craft room also has my massage table in it), and things just tidied, and now it is a much more welcoming space. And just today I went another level and went through the boxes in the closet (I was looking for something among the randomness) and did some more consolidation and gained a view of what the next level of organization could be... maybe in another year.

Part of the clutter in the craft room was a stack of art that I hadn't gotten around to hanging. After being in this house for a full year, I finally got some of it hung. So that stack is smaller if not fully eliminated yet. I just don't have a vision of which walls they will go on yet.

Having a workable routine, a high comfort level with To Do lists, and taming my hot spots has brought more peace to me on more than one level. I look forward to continuing the Mary and Martha challenges as well as taking opportunities to live more chic-ly in creating the higher quality of life that I wish to achieve.

Hope you have enjoyed these bucket list reports  (1, 2+3, 4). I've enjoyed making these improvements in my own life.

Bucket List Report Items Two and Three: Food and Diet

In my bucket list post I had two food related items. I made it a goal to figure out planning lunches and snacks to get a better handle on my less-supervised eating. And then I wanted to complete a Whole30 diet.

I can't say I've had huge success in the lunch department. Of course we did just come off of our Whole30 and lunches were the hardest part of that too. I'm still great at dinners, comparatively. At this point I'm getting used to the idea of letting lunches be a little more repetitive where dinners can be more varied. Lunch is now a sandwich or leftovers.

As for snacking, the easy answer I learned during our Whole30 was don't. Simply put, I think our Whole30 was as effective as it was this time around because of cutting out snacking entirely. Or if we do get hungry between meals it's better not to turn to the easy, processed, snack foods. It's better to see a "snack" more as a mini meal so that you can make better food choices and be more satisfied with what you eat rather than just turning into a mind-less grazer. That is one lesson that really stuck with me from my nutrition classes in college: avoid mind-less eating where it's more about going through a motion rather than eating with intent to actually focus on enjoying what you put in your mouth. You end of eating less this way, but you are more satisfied.

Now, I failed to take any Before and After pictures of us for this round of Whole30-ness, but we wrote down our starting and ending weights and I also have my body composition numbers thanks to our smart scale.

I am pleased to announce that Charles lost 20 lbs and I lost about 13 lbs. But that's not all! Charles says that the only other change he noticed was that he just felt tired and hungry all the time. I didn't ever really get into a good "Tiger Blood" phase myself (more on that later) but my body composition numbers all settled into the healthy ranges where they hadn't really been before. Towards the end, my muscle mass actually squeaked into the High range. That is probably because of my exercise program. That right there is probably why they stress so hard the rule of not using the scale during the month; because there are other changes at work besides straight weight-loss. (Weight-loss isn't even a main focus of the Whole30 program at all; it's simply a pleasant side effect of the body healing itself.)

Confession: in truth I think we really only should get credit for half of a Whole30. We did a pure Whole18 before we "took a break" when we went out of town for a weekend to spend time with family. When we got back it was rather difficult to get back in the saddle. Part of it was because I was sick when we got home. After eating just about everything on the "no" list, it really isn't surprising to me. I'm just a little jealous that Charles' system is less sensitive than mine so he didn't get sick at all from our lapse. But that is why we didn't get any "Tiger Blood", because we didn't stay faithful to the program for the full amount of time so we did not reap the full benefits.

But we still lost weight, my face did finally clear up, and I'm very happy with my body composition numbers. So it was still worth it.

It seems that every time we do this diet, we get a little better at it. Last time we cheated on the snacking rule but stayed "true" for the whole time. This time we did lots better about not snacking but we cheated on the scale rule. It was fun to see the weight slough off, especially at the beginning. I was surprised how fast the weight came off at the beginning. So we actually exceeded my expectations in that regard. Next time I can hope we shall continue to improve.