De-Cluttering My House (and life please) in Days of My Destiny

I’ve been massively de-cluttering our house the last few days. I think half the house is gone, lol. It feels pretty good! The girls have waaaay less toys than they used to. They now have one toy box in their room each and one large basket full of books in there. Then they have their wheeled toys (bikes, scooters, toy prams etc), dress-up clothes for them and their baby dolls, and plush toys. I’m pretty sure that’s enough!!!! M at first wasn’t too happy on the idea of giving anything away but I think she gets the idea now. For example she somehow had 3 cushions plus two little pillows, none of which she EVER uses. I let her keep ONE. She wasn’t too happy at first but in the end she realised that having one is better than having none. I’m trying to teach her that less is better. Because it really is! I also told her that having less toys means that when I ask them to tidy up, it’ll be easier for them. She really liked that lol. Her and Little L are right into Lego at the moment, which makes things SO much easier because it means that all the toddler-oriented toys and books can simply go!!!! Yes!!!! (Except for a handful of mementos!) I’m SO glad to see so many of the girls’ books finally GOING. I’ve held onto them for years because they were from family, but you know what.... the time comes when you have to forget even THAT, because SO MANY of the books ARE from family!!! And a lot of them are just CRAP! I’ve thrown a lot of crappy family-gifted ones over the years but there’s still more to go! As I went through the books today, keeping some and putting others aside, I realised a pattern. I was putting aside the ones that don’t reflect the values I want in this home. And that’s how it SHOULD be, regardless of who the book is from! I noticed that the books I was keeping were mainly to do with: educational topics (such as learning about the health system of the body, or about space, or about animals) and life topics (such as learning how to get along with people, or looking after animals, or forgiveness etc). I’m SO glad L is finally on board with me too because in the past I’ve put books aside to go to the op shop and he’ll look at them and say, “Oh but this one was from X.” So then I’ve put them back. But this time we are on the same page and it makes SUCH a huge difference. Of course I’ve still kept one or two that aren’t necessarily with any values attached. I can’t even think of any of the titles but I definitely threw out 98% of the junk and I’m GLAD.

Today the girls and I did half an hour of actual exercise outside. My kids aren’t the kind of kids to get their exercise in by way of playing actively, because I never taught them to. I never taught them because I assumed this came naturally to children. It makes sense though that they AREN’T naturally inclined to move around because they haven’t seen ME do this as an everyday way of life. Anyhow I will be making sure that we do this every single day from now on and then anything else on TOP of that that DOES come naturally to them will be even more exercise which will be better! Today we warmed up by jogging around our backyard (which roughly has a 150m circumference) and then we stretched. Next we did a lap around the backyard on our bikes and then we planked (Little L for 10 seconds, M for 22 seconds - me for 42 so as not to bore them lol, I can actually last a minute at the moment… and my best has been a minute forty or thereabouts before. Tangent.) and then we did sit ups and then we went for a walk around the backyard as a cool down. It was fun and the girls said so too! Well done, mumma!

I spent pretty much the rest of the day de-cluttering and also hand washing loads of washing because the washing machine is broken at the moment. Would you believe I have slightly sore hands and red patches (that would turn into blisters if I did more) from wringing so many clothes?!? The next thing we will be doing is going through our clothes and getting rid of quite a few! We have more than enough and more than we need, so it’s time.

Back to my health. I need to get back into it all again. I’m trying, but only half-heartedly. It’s time to pull my socks up. I’m eating too much junk. Nowhere near as some people though, but too much for my liking. (I read about one lady who decided to quit sugar after realising she had about 16 teaspoons of sugar at breakfast time alone! I was like. whaaaaaat?!? How does that even happen!?!?!?) I need to move more. I need to drink more water. I also need to get enough sleep. Right now it’s twenty minutes until midnight and I’ve been having so many late nights. It’s not even because of the festive season, I’ve just been having late nights and then everyday I’m telling myself that tonight will be the night I get serious about getting enough sleep. And then the next day I’m telling myself the same thing. Ahh. What a crazy pattern. On the one hand I want to enjoy this lack of routine (due to school holidays) but on the other hand I want to look after myself. Through these late nights though, I have found that I hit a time when I get energized and I want to DO stuff, like tidy up etc etc. I always WAS like that, all my life until I met L who has always gone to bed early. But do I get the energy late at night because I’ve stayed up past a healthy bed time and therefore my body is kind of in adrenaline mode? Or does it get energized because that’s just the time that my body works best? The thing is… that going to bed late never equals a late sleep-in because I have children, so it’s never worth staying up TOO late. Even midnight these days is like WOAH for my body the next day! And I know that exercising more and drinking more water and resting enough will all give me enough energy during the DAY! (Not that I DON’T have energy, it’s just that I’m not operating at my best capacity lately)

I remember when I was 20 I didn’t want to be an Old Thirty Year Old. So I worked hard on my health and fitness with VISION, at a time when not many other people I knew were doing this. And now I’ve hit this weird lazy patch that is lasting too long and I’m like, well.. I’m 30 and I don’t want to be a Lethargic Forty Year Old. I need to keep holding onto that vision. It’s almost like I need to de-clutter my life of thes bad habits I’ve started, and pronto!

Last updated December 30, 2014