Be Not Afraid

I can't say anything that would really express anything new about the Pope's crossing of the threshold of hope yesterday. I was living in Europe when he became Pope. I was not a Catholic. His first public words as Pope were "Be not afraid." A couple of years later I was in Anchorage, Alaska when he visited there. I got to see him and that was my first mass ever. I was still not a Catholic. I became a Catholic in 1990, about 10 years later. Almost 10 years after that, my husband played the CD of Pope John Paul II's Latin Rosary for several days in a row, continuously. That was when my sixth child was in dire straits right after his liver transplant.

The following is from "Crossing the Threshold of Hope":

The words Christ uttered are repeated by the Church. And with the Church, they are repeated by the Pope. I have done so since the first homily I gave in St. Peter's Square: "Be not afraid!" These are not words said into a void. They are profoundly rooted in the Gospel. They are simply the words of Christ Himself.

Of what should we not be afraid? We should not fear the truth about ourselves. One day Peter became aware of this and with particular energy he said to Jesus: "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man" (Lk 5:8).

Peter was not the only one who was aware of this truth. Every man has learned it. Every successor to Peter has learned it. I learned it very well. Every one of us is indebted to Peter for what he said on that day: "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." Christ answered him: "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men" (Lk 5:10). Do not be afraid of men! Man is always the same. The systems he creates are always imperfect, and the more imperfect they are, the more he is sure of himself. Where does this originate? It comes from the human heart. Our hearts are anxious. Christ knows our anguish best of all: "Christ knows that which is in every man" (cf. Jn 2:25).

Taming a Household Dragon

I've found that if I write something down that I am dreading doing, and make an appointment with myself to get a start on it at some specified time, I am MUCH more likely to actually do it and not procrastinate. It's not 100 % but it's more than the 35% I achieve when I don't do this.

So for instance, I have been bothered for a couple of weeks every time I stepped into the garage because it really does look horrible. I cleaned it last summer, but not since.

1. Commit to a start. So since it is a BIG job, I commited myself to spending 10 minutes a day on it. I think Flylady calls this Taming the Dragon. Anyway, that's how I think of it. I can almost visualize myself picking up my gauntlets, sword and shield and going out to spar.

2. Let it percolate. Giving myself a time in the (near) future allows me to figure out the "first step". I usually pick something easy that will pay off heavily in terms of how the place looks. So for the garage, the big "easy" thing was the bicycles all over the place.

3. Set a Date. I made the appointment for today, and when I had a few extra moments this morning I decided to go ahead and get the battle over with. Of course, once you start it's usually not difficult to do a bit more than the minimum.

4. Don't Overdo It. I try hard not to get carried away at first, with a big job. You can burn out that way and short-circuit future efforts, giving yourself an aversion that lingers. (this conscious reining-in may not be necessary for everyone, but it is helpful for closet perfectionists)

5. Plan while you work. Once I had engaged with the work, I naturally came up with the next step, and the next. It's useful to stop with a next step already in place (I found this out as a writer). That way, it's easier to pick up the work at the next session.

6. Delegate what you can. I actually left the bicycles for the boys to put away in the basement, and spent my time picking up and straightening.

7. Keep going. Now, I will try to spend 10 minutes, at least 4-5 times a week, working on this. I usually find that at some point there's a small enough bit left to do that I can spend 30-60 minutes and just FINISH. The trick is to wait for the right time to use that finishing-up momentum.

8. Be OK with 85%. I have learned to tell myself "good done is better than best undone" or "don't make the best the enemy of the good". If I can make it to 86% or even 90%, that's nice, but I try save the 110% effort for things that are of primary importance -- nurturing a sick child, or my prayer life -- things that are going to make a difference for more than the next week or month or year.

So there's my Dragon-Battling Checklist.

Tuesday Tackle --Crisis Clean

Tuesday is about tackling the biggest project that needs to be done.

The whole house is a project right now with four of the kids having been sick and one in the hospital for a few days. Flylady has a routine for times like this: Crisis Cleaning. Basically, the idea is to start in the kitchen and work outward from there, taking frequent breaks.

Since nurturing the recovering children is also a high priority, I'm going to go with the flow in that area.... that is, do the kind of cleaning that can be interrupted at a moment's notice, and include children-time in the break times.

I will probably continue this through the week until the laundry is caught up, everything is back in its proper place, and so on. Part of this is simply getting back in touch with my house again. My palm pilot has to synchronize occasionally with my computer. In the same way, I seem to have to consciously re-synch with my house after I've been detached from it for a while.

Same with my family, though not in quite the same way, and that comes first, of course. So there's the plan!

Health and House --Update

A short update:

I have been busy with several other things so it's been a while since I posted a systems update.

Household

The Household Journey thing I did was one of the best housekeeping efforts I have ever accomplished. I am still seeing the benefits even now when housekeeping has been mostly in maintenance mode. I know where things are; it takes less time to clean; I feel more in touch with the house. My plan is to do a more conscientious Tour like that about 2-3 times a year, and in between do what I am doing now -- go through in the same pattern, but more quickly. For example, yesterday I went through the bathrooms, but it only took about 20 minutes instead of almost an hour.

What I really have to do (and I'm procrastinating) are some big household repair/redo type projects. I hate buying things (except books). I hate household projects like painting. Strictly speaking, I've never DONE household projects like painting because I've always had my hands full with babies and I simply can't multi-task like some people can. So I have a lot of oppositional tension built up about the THOUGHT of doing mental-intense household repairs and renovations that involve shopping for things that cost $$$ (and can't be read or worn or eaten or played with). It will probably be fun and confidence-building when I start. But I haven't really started, because I'm procrastinating ;-).

Health

I continue to lose about 2 pounds a month. Sure, that is slow progress but basically, in 3 months I've lost almost 12 pounds, which is real progress. I haven't had to pay so much conscious attention to it this time, so it's worth the slower downward curve. I have a basic eating pattern now which I'll try to describe but probably everyone has to find what works for them:

• A solid breakfast with a lot of protein -- sometimes I can get by on milk and cereal, or a whole wheat pancake, but the gold standard is eggs and cheese, and if I am feeling shaky in my blood sugar it's risky for me to have too much carbs in the breakfast -- even whole grain.
• A solid lunch -- some high quality carbs here are OK -- fruit, bread.
• A snack in the later afternoon..... fruit or vegetables and cheese, something like that.
• A smallish dinner -- about the size of lunch, usually protein and vegetables.

I sometimes have "off" days where I eat a chocolate chip cookie for a snack instead of something stabilizing, and it doesn't seem to hurt once in a while. I've learned to try to balance out -- if I eat some jellybeans, I make sure the next meal is protein-dense.

Exercise helps with the blood sugar swings but I haven't been consistent with the exercise because of the heat and because I've been busy with other things. I can really feel the difference.

So that's where I am now!

Task #15: Master Bathroom

Here is the master bathroom. It gets a lot of use since it's the only upstairs bathroom.

You can see the cupboard doors need some refinishing, and the cabinet door is broken. Mostly I just put the top of the cabinet in order, straightened the shoes, scrubbed the toilet, and scrubbed the corners and baseboards of the walls.


This is the view of the bathroom from the bedroom -- I like the chair better there, with the scale underneath and a towel on top to hide the torn part:


Whew, I'm done with my household journey! Originally it was supposed to be divided into 18 tasks -- I consolidated the great room/dining room, and did the kitchen in one day, and consolidated the loft into two parts instead of three. So that brought me down to 15, which means that in future I can spend the last few days of the month working on either kids' rooms, or outside around the house.

For now, I'm going to rest! I will probably blog some retrospective thoughts about what I learned from this and where I'm going from here. This run through was probably the most difficult -- next run through, I'm going to try to discard more things, keeping in mind these quotes from High Desert Home:

• True Simplicity
• Busy at Home

Task #14: Master Bedroom

I didn't have too much to do in the master bedroom. I vacuumed under the bed and cabinets and computer, and scrubbed the wooden baseboards, and straightened a bit, and dusted or wiped the surfaces. These are both "after" pictures.

Task #13: Eastern Side of Loft

My husband and older kids went to town to see a movie, so I ended up working on the rest of the loft Wednesday evening instead of Thursday as I would have normally.



Preparation, Action:

The center part of the loft actually didn't look too bad overall. There was very little clutter -- most of it was over at the western part. So most of my cleaning time I spent straightening, putting a few things away, vacuuming thoroughly, and wiping surfaces and part of the banister. I still need to dust the rafters and fan, and go through the audio cabinet .

I am finding that knowing what I am going to do next helps me prepare at the same time as I am working on the present tasks. So I was cleaning the east part of the loft even while I was focusing on the west part, and I did a little work on the master bedroom today in the process of working on the east side of the loft.

On the other hand, today was a bit demoralizing. Typical of me to get close enough to the finish line to actually see it, and then start moving too fast and wiping out. It's happening now with the last 12 days of "school" too; I just want to be done, but that certainly isn't the attitude I want to cultivate either with home learning OR with my home cleaning. It is the present moment I am working on, after all!

From here you can see all four of the boys' beds -- Paddy's youth bed in the front, Sean's next to the bookcase, and Kieron's and Aidan's over in the window area:


Paddy's little bed, the audio center, Sean's collection of footballs:


Here is a close-up of Kieron and Aidan's area; Kieron tidied it earlier today:

Here is the view looking towards the master bedroom -- a bit "busy" -- I would like to do something about that cloth, but it hides even more distracting cardboard boxes:


Here's the view from my room back over the loft:


Considerations:

One of the reasons I'm making this "journey" through the house is that there is a chance we may have to move. Funny how it's easier to pay attention to something when there's a possibility it might be taken away. Something I ought to ponder, because I do tend to walk through all my blessings almost blindly, and "wake up" only when there is some change. Seems to me that there might be some acedia in that.

I love our nice "tree house" but it would take some work to make it buyer-ready. I am not photo-ing the floors and ceilings and walls, which are the most banged-up and stretched -- the ceiling is sagging from many winters of heavy snows, and the floors and walls -- you can imagine, with six boys. And I don't really want to leave it, but I do want to be more intentional about keeping it up.

Last two tasks: The master bedroom and the master bathroom.

Task #12: the western side of the loft

This is our upstairs loft. Originally it was going to be our "schoolroom" but it ended up being more of a rec-room while we do the bulk of our formal academics downstairs near the fireplace.

The before and after pictures don't look much different, unfortunately -- the upstairs seems to always look cluttered and un-flowing, though it's quite relaxing to sit up there as you can see (they don't ALWAYS spend their time in front of the screen, it just looks that way):

BEFORE



AFTER:




The bulk of the time was spent organizing and sorting through toys -- I got them all organized by type, as you can perhaps see:


I got 2 whole bags out of there, one to throw out and one to give away -- which brings me up to Bags 11 and 12 in the Trashbag Challenge:


The toy-sorting took over an hour, then the rest of the time I spent vacuuming the corners, dusting, wiping, and sorting books and videotapes. SO this was a time-consuming job, almost 2 hours' worth.

Next is the center loft. This will be easier because it is not quite so cluttered, though it does double as a sort of dormitory for the four younger boys.

Task #11: The Pantry

With my pantry, it's a bit difficult to show a "before" and "after" difference without showing the gross floor, which was probably the worst thing there. I didn't want to photograph that. But anyway, here are a couple of pictures -- one taken from the kitchen looking in, and the other from inside:

BEFORE:




What I did:

• Vacuumed and swept the shelves, the floor, and underneath the shelves
• Wiped some of the shelves, especially in front where it seems to be dirtiest.
• Scrubbed the floor.
• Rearranged everything to get as much as possible off the floor, and the rest loosely categorized , as follows:

I keep miscellaneous "surplus" baking supplies and pasta in the back, canned food on the right upper side, small kitchen appliances on the right lower side, cereal and bulk baking supplies on the left side, and pet supplies right to the right as you walk in. Oh, and cleaning supplies are on the top shelf away from the little ones, and there's a few odds and ends like extra baskets and bowls in the back too.

So here's a couple of AFTER shots:

View from inside




View from the kitchen looking in -- I tried it without the flash so you wouldn't get blinded by the window rebound twice in one post:


Conclusion/Continuation

• Either later today or next time through, I need to sort through the cans and look at expiration dates, and while I'm at it, scrub the shelves down and line them with paper or something so they won't get any more stained than they are already.
• While I'm at it I'd like to make some sort of dynamic inventory -- that means, not just a list of what's in there, but some sort of plan for how to use it up.
  
• I also need to weed down on the surplus stuff at the back -- I didn't really get rid of ANYTHING except some trash from under the shelves, this time.

That concludes the downstairs stage of the tour! This week and next I will be focusing on our upper level. That will be broken down into five sections: Western side of loft, central section of loft, eastern side of loft, master bedroom, and master bathroom.

Next stop on journey:

The west side of the loft

Task #10: South Side of Kitchen

I worked some more on the kitchen:

• Scoured the toaster and toaster oven.
• Scoured the copper utensil-holder.
• Scoured the pot-and-pan rack above the stove.
• Moved things on the counter and scrubbed behind.

It took a lot longer to do than it does to write! It is humbling working on the kitchen because you can always see more you could have done.... there's still a mess on top of the refrigerator, for example. Next time.

Anyway, here are some after pictures:




Aidan took a picture of me relaxing with my book and some coffee-- and those books in the background are the schoolbooks we are still using this year.

Curriculum Closet: AFTER Pictures

AFTER -- picture of curriculum closet.


This one turned out really dark, but you can see the different levels of curriculum stacked in plastic crates for the future.

One view from inside

Task #9: The Curriculum Closet

Today was a "lateral pass" day. I guess I can do those once in a while. I didn't finish working on the kitchen. Instead I tackled the curriculum closet. I think I can add two more bags to my total for the Trash Bag Challenge! They are not literally bags, but boxes of curriculum that I probably, really almost certainly, will send out the door. So that is 10 trash bags now, I think, if I really do manage to get them out of the house. Getting rid of curriculum is very difficult for me. The only things more difficult are getting rid of books and getting rid of mementos which are associated with poignant moments in our lives. Those have added up through the years! One possible midway solution is to take photos of the best of the old cute drawings, knickknacks etc -- I am afraid that is slightly spirit vs body Manichean -- however, I do really want a cleared house, so that might be the best solution.

I worked for about two hours. I put all the workbooks and "consumable" type resources into four plastic crates divided by grade levels:

• Primary (k-2)
• Grades 3-4
• Grades 5-6
• Middle school

After that age level we don't use very many consumables, just real books and a few texts; I put the high school books on shelves, and also the teacher's manuals and resources. That way these are easier to see. I also didn't crate the children's literature that makes up the bulk of our homeschooling. Those, too, I like where I can see them and where there is potential of the kids picking it out.

I will take pictures when it is fit to see. It's still a mess in there, just a slightly more organized mess.

Susan L is decluttering her house too, and here is a post Busy at Home that has quotes, links, and descriptions of her efforts. It is inspiring for me to read of others' efforts.

Task #8: North Side of Kitchen

I worked my hour or so in the kitchen, but I will admit there is still much left to do. While I was working on it, I came to the realization that for several years, survival lay in hurry. When I had small babies, cleaning the kitchen meant either zipping through at top speed for the 15 minutes he was looking at his mobile, or delegating kids.

Now that I have more time, my rushed habits yet remain. I am trying to be more respectful, more peaceful, almost more contemplative about doing these necessary and never-done things. It does not come easily to me -- housework and cooking are what you rush through so you can get to the good stuff -- reading, thinking, writing, talking. But the Kathleen Norris book is right -- too much of that leads to acedia. For now I resolved to at least dwell on one thing and try to make it beautiful. I liked what Anna at Pleasant View Schoolhouse wrote in Lessons from Vintage Fiction:

A room isn't finished until it reflects the homemaker's love of beauty. A pot of primroses on the dinner table, an embroidered bureau cover on the bedroom chest of drawers, a clean dresser scarf on the buffet in the dining room--creating a home takes attention to detail.

Now, here are some BEFORE pictures -- we have a music center in the kitchen -- no compartmentalization here : ):




I spared you the pan with the scrambled eggs remains. My kitchen looks like this every morning -- we're a family of nine!

Some of the "after" views will have to wait until tomorrow because I only got to about half of it. I find the kitchen extremely challenging for my sensibilities. I dislike grease, I dislike strong cleaning agents, I find it difficult to work very hard on a small spot and have it look only better, not perfect.

But here's what I worked on:

The stove -- scoured top, underside, surface. -- swept underneath and collected a lot of little things, some from way back when the 5 year old was a toddler.



Microwave area -- wiped a bit -- I will admit I didn't get to the interior of those cabinets. My husband made the doors of them a couple of years ago ;-).

If you take a look at the first "before" picture, this is the after -- inside the bottom cabinet.
Detail: the tea kettle. I worked on this for about 15 minutes, scouring and polishing. I tried to make it look like it was loved and respected. That was my little try at perfection in the details for at least one thing today.

Interlude in Household Journey

I have to run errands in town today, so this series today is a bits and pieces interlude. This is the top drawer of the hutch, BEFORE:



and AFTER.

It looks better, yes, but most of the changes are just cosmetic. I consolidated and stacked, I didn't really toss much or make many changes. Basically, yes, it's a junk drawer. I find these difficult to live without in my busy family, and have to admit I have a junk drawer in almost every room where I can throw all the odds and ends and sort through them at intervals. Next run through, I need to really decide where all these things out to go -- tapes to the audio cabinet, and so on.

This is a midway shot of my kitchen cabinet. I had dumped out all the books to sort -- give away, reshelve. Yes, I do keep books in my kitchen cabinet. I actually did get a good bag of give-away books out of the lot. There were about three times as many as you see here.


After -- still crammed. I put the wooden educational toys and kindergarten activity books in there. I plan to rotate them out -- they were out on shelves but were getting stale and ignored. The binders on the bottom are for (1) my lesson plans and resource lists (2) work accomplished.



Now, here I cringe because these are two before shots of my curriculum closet. Who needs a walk-in for CLOTHES -- DH and I keep all of ours in a couple of chests of drawers. This is my little storage space for hibernating curriculum gathered over 15 years teaching 6 children. I have gotten rid of boxes and boxes of resources through the years, but this is what I am having a hard time letting go of. I worked on it for a while this morning, mostly just consolidating all the curriculum into here so that I could sort through and organize.

This is a fully-fledged Dragon in my house and I am going to devote a good part of the summer to ruthless sorting and weeding. Since I know this will be difficult for me -- my weakness is books and curriculum -- I'm going to arrange a set of halfway boxes. I will put the curriculum in there and then have my shelves clear for the stuff I really like and will most likely use.

Task #7: Great Room

The job today covered much more space than usual but is simpler because it is our "minimal" area of the house. It is the first room people see when they walk into the house. The kids clean it twice weekly and I try to vacuum down there every other day.

My goal for it is: uncluttered, simple, spacious, shining. Needless to say it does not live up to that vision very regularly, but that's what I was aiming for this morning -- getting everything possible off the surfaces.

Preparation -- the day before

• Brendan brought the big box of printer paper upstairs
• I brought an old 3D Notre Dame Cathedral puzzle upstairs

Now, for BEFORE (this morning -- son doing his schoolwork in the foreground)




What I did (it's not going to really show up in the picture too much, but take my word for it -- it was a 2-hour task counting helping sons with math and grammar in the process).

• Broke down the boxes we use for firestarters over by the fireplace, in order to consolidate them into a smaller tidier space
• Collected miscellaneous books that were lying around and put them in a pile to reshelve upstairs
• Collected various toys, ditto
• Collected various blankets, ditto
• Swept carefully around the hearth
• Polished the newly cleared wooden surfaces
• Wiped and scrubbed the windowsills and benches.
• Cleaned and swept under the couch
• Changed, cleaned and refilled the barometer water.

After





Conclusion, Continuation

Still to DO, either today or next time around:

• Take the cardboard and newspapers out to the garage or basement (I am not doing that yet because it is perfectly possible it will still get cold enough to need our wood stove)
• Move the ugly taped-up light you see at the bottom of the barometer picture
• Oh, and that SPIDER WEB -- I didn't see it when I was dusting over there.
• Vacuum the floor
• Vacuum under the seat cushions (it doesn't get too bad because of the covers I keep over the sofas but still, needs to be done every now and then.
• Bring up the kids' schoolbooks -- they are in a box on the "hutch". That will be for the next pass through because right now we are still three weeks away from the end of the last term for our year.
• Straighten basket next to foyer ( a catchall for library books, keys, and whatever else)

Task #9:

The north side of the kitchen ... yes, this endeavour will have to be broken down.

Task #6: Foyer-Mudroom

I don't really know what you call it -- airlock? Anyway, that room in between the outside door and the inside door, very useful to have in colder climates. This is what it looked like this morning after my preparation, but it doesn't have shoes all over the place normally.



By the way, I skipped the coat closet in my journey because I just cleaned and organized it about 2 weeks ago and it can wait until next month since it doesn't get used much in the summer time anyway.

Preparation:

• Wet cloths with soap
• Took all the shoes out of the shoe chest.
• Got out the vacuum

Action:

• Vacuumed inside the shoe chest, and around it.
• Scrubbed the inside of the shoe chest, and around it.
• Sorted through the shoes -- threw away the yucky tattered ones, and saved a few pairs to give away.
• Took some stuff out of there, like the chainsaw, and put it in the garage.
• Aidan brought an old plastic bin out of there and sprayed it clean with the hose. I'm not bringing it back in though -- I think I will use it for kindling or something else.

This took close to an hour, but part of the time I was making breakfast, helping Aidan get shoes on, etc.
Conclusion/Continuation:

• The kids will scrub and sweep the floor as part of their Monday chores.
• The walls really need repainting.
• There were some shoes I probably could have given away, strictly speaking, but since there was plenty of room I kept them as extras. We have all sizes of kids and we are quite streamlined on shoes -- the older boys generally have a regular pair, a Sunday pair, some winter boots and sometimes athletic shoes. That's still 24 pairs total! but not really exorbitant considering.

Now the pictures:

Not really a "before" -- actually a "midway" but you can see all the shoes to sort through.


After

The trash I got rid of -- that makes 8 bags total so far.

The inside part -- decluttered of shoes.

After -- you can still see some car junk there I need to do something with but I'm leaving it there for now until I tackle the garage, since it's getting congested in there.

Oh, and until I saw the picture I didn't even notice the layer of grime at the bottom of the chest. That's where our dog lies after he's come in from playing in the spring mud outside ;-)

Next Task:

Front of Greatroom

Household Interlude: Reshelving Books

I didn't take any "Before" pictures, but I spent some time sorting and reshelving books, and here is one of the shelves looking much less dilapidated than it did before.

You know, a couple of years ago I put much time and thought into categorizing books and it has really paid off. It only took me about 45 minutes to sort, stack and reshelve about four full boxes-full. I had been dreading this task and had let it pile up ever since last September, but in vain. I still have a box to put in the closet in my room (more on that project in future blogs) and a box of childrens' books with no home at present.

That's OK, since I had planned to discard about 10 % anyway. That is for next week -- the sorting and discarding process.

Another surprise was that the shelves aren't jammed. You can see above that there is still some room. I had collected more books this year -- as usual!!-- and was afraid there'd be an overspill. Right now, it's looking good, though.

The rest of the house, where I haven't been working to clean, is trashed. That is for next week too, or possibly I'll do a bit later today since we have a quiet home day except for evening Mass.

Once the books are in their proper places I will be able to better plan for next year with my 7th grader and 2 first graders.

Friday Fitness

For today's post on fitness I thought I would quote my daughter:

It's been said lots of times, but it always could do with some saying again: the scale is not the most accurate measure of weight loss. In fact, it can be downright inaccurate at times. If I hop on one Sunday, and see no change, it could be one or more of several things... it could be that my muscles are retaining water, it could be that I ate something high in sodium the day before, it could be that I'm suffering from that time of month.

I like a scale to check in once a week... it reminds me of what I'm doing, and is encouraging if I see a loss. But I'm making my main form of really tracking my progress my measurements. If I lose inches and not pounds, I know I'm going somewhere. If I lose pounds and not inches, I wonder what's going on. I take my measurements every so often... sometimes on the first of the month, sometimes the first of every other month.

But if I'm exercising, eating healthy, and treating my body the right way, and see no losses in inches or pounds, I'm still determined not to despair and give up. Perhaps I'm not doing everything quite right, and need to figure out what little things I may be slipping up in (BLTs!), but I was that much healthier for a week, I have that much more energy now, and I'm that much closer to getting there. If there's nothing else to show for my hard work, at least I feel so much better, and that's something in itself.

I really think that's the bottom line. I personally step on the scale daily because it helps me gain a habit of accountability for that day. I've tried the once-a-week method but it is too easy for me to lose focus. However, I only record the weight once a week so that I don't end up recording fluctuations that are basically meaningless. Any day to day weight loss or gain is going to be pretty meaningless, because no one can really gain or lose more than a few grams a day unless it is water weight.


My other "daily" habits for healthy eating are:

• Putting on good clothes in the morning. If you saw me during the day you would not necessarily think "well dressed" because my usual outfit is (nice) jeans and a long sleeved shirt. But this is actually a step up from my comfort outfit of sweats and pajama top ;-). Anyway, I think there is something psychological about taking a few minutes in the morning to try to get where you wouldn't be humiliated to be seen if you had to go to a meeting at short notice.
• Eating regularly. So hard for me to do. I usually am not hungry at breakfast. But if I eat something in the morning and make sure to eat 3-4 times a day, things go way better.
• Living actively. My first clue that I'm "slipping" on my healthy habits is that I don't want to exercise.

As my daughter said, if I am doing those things I can feel good about how I am doing even if there is not much of a loss on the scale.

Task #5: Hall Bookshelves

BEFORE



































AFTER


































Description

Took about 45 minutes -- I got rid of a small bag of books and brought a bigger lot upstairs where they belonged.

I had been in town almost all day so was pretty tired out but wanted to get this section of the house done before the weekend. Now I can move out to the great room and kitchen next week.

Continuation

Next time I'm going to try to put the books into more logical order, and get rid of a few more if possible, but it's not worth it organizing them all carefully right now because I still have so many upstairs that need sorting and reshelving, that the order will probably change quite a bit.