HTCI Update

This is extremely embarrassing, but here goes nothing. Welcome to Step #5 - Gather Tools and Document Evidence.

For this step, I had to let my house go for 2 days in order to see where things end up in piles and such. This was really difficult for me, but it had to be done and so I did it. For 2 days, I watched as piles accumulated and my house turned into a complete disaster. Wow. I had no idea how quickly we create piles and how often they land in so many places!

So, without further ado, my documentation:

When you walk into our front door, this is what you see

After walking through the entryway, you end up in our living room

Then, you walk up the stairs to the next level (gotta love split levels!). To the right, is our kitchen:

On the other side of our kitchen, is our playroom/office/supposed to be a formal dining room:

*I cannot believe I am putting these out for the world to see*

Next, you climb the big set of stairs:

This lands you in the upstairs, the first door on the left is the guest/Emma's bathroom:

Keep on going and the next door on the left is our Master Bedroom:

Master Bath and walk-in closet are in this room as well

After this, looking straight ahead in the hallway is our hall linen closet:

To the right of this, is the guest bedroom/craft room:

Next, is the nursery but I could not take pictures in there because Emma was sleeping... suffice it to say that the nursery is clean so did not really need to be pictured anyway... 

After this, we head all the way down to the basement:

Looks dangerous doesn't it? It is. It's a disaster. Anyway, moving on... we head down into the basement into our rec room:

To the right of the finished portion of the basement is the unfinished portion with the laundry room and crawl space:

Next, we'll hit the last place in our house that you could possibly store all of your junk... the garage:

That concludes our disgusting and hoard-ish house tour. I can't believe what I saw when I took all of these pictures. In our defense, we are trying to clean out the basement and garage and have had a lot of work being done in these areas, despite the picture evidence to the contrary. Everything is in complete disarray and it's awful! I'm sick to my stomach just looking at all of this! How will I ever get this organized??? ugh...

HTCI Update

Today, I actually made progress on my House That Cleans Itself project, and all I have to say is:  WOW

Why? Because I did not realize just how messy, dis-organized and cluttered my home is. What an over abundance of stuff we have been blessed with. When looking at the house as I did my prayer walk and took pictures, I was struck by how much stuff we have and how much God has blessed us in our time in this house. I was struck by my laziness and my lack of willingness to do anything about the clutter and the mess. There have been improvements but man! this house is in need of some serious purging and re-organizing and cleaning.

HTCI Step 4:  Put God at the Center

This step was made up of completing a prayer walk through the house. I started in the basement and made my way up to the bedrooms, taking a grand tour of my own home and taking stock of everything in it. I stopped on the main floor and stood in the center of the play room and prayed for every room on the main floor where we do almost all of our "living". Since we own a split level house, I could cover almost every room. I need to do another more thorough prayer walk but I have decided that as we continue room by room with the next steps, that I will commit to praying while I am working on that room.

It is amazing how many things I was able to praise God for and it also amazed me how shameful I felt for not just having so much stuff (there is nothing Biblically wrong with owning things), but for having so much stuff that we do not use or have never used and have no need of. What a shameful waste of resources, God's money, and space in our home. Now, granted... much of what we have in the toy room was all gifted to Emma so I am not counting that room. We have been fortunate with Emma in that we have only purchased her a few (literally, less than 5) toys and most of that has come from thrift stores. We are SO blessed by the people that God has placed in our lives. Everything else, is our own failure. Purchases made with good intentions most of the time, but things that are just piling up because we are unwilling to part with them.

Today, in my Bible Study group, we were challenged with the thought that if everyone and everything in our life was taken away and we were left completely alone and without our things, would God be enough?

This prayer walk really helped me to see that although, in my heart, I believe that God is enough... I am not portraying that in my daily life and in my home.

Lord willing, I will have a long life with my beloved family and friends... but today I realized that I need to get to a point where God is enough.

Next step:  Gather Tools and Document Evidence.  Stay tuned because you are going to be flabbergasted by the photos that I took today. It may take a day or two to stir up the courage to actually post them on here!

Aprons and Apples: Fitness Freebie - free printable fitness and healthy eating journal

Aprons and Apples: Fitness Freebie - free printable fitness and healthy eating journal

Part of the domestic life that I am struggling with, is not a new challenge to me. It is a constant, daily struggle to create healthy eating habits, a healthy lifestyle and the motivation to accomplish a healthy attitude.

I am lazy. I love food and I love it in every form, for the most part. I crave sweets of any kind and feel happy and emotionally fulfilled when I eat my way through a pan of brownies or make my way through a creamy, sugary frappucino at the Starbucks in my Target store.

When I was growing up, we only ate out at a restaurant on rare occasions and before leaving for college, I could only make my way through half of a quarter pounder meal before feeling so full that I couldn't take one more bite. Now? I can eat and entire quarter pounder meal and still be hungry for more. No exaggeration. My "eating for two" days ended a month ago as my toddler gave up breastfeeding and now my body is going haywire. I've literally gained 9 pounds in 4 weeks. I started drinking pop again and having some concoction of coffee every day. I just eat and eat and eat.

I love food... but it's time to make a change. I want to do everything I can to be here for my husband and my daughter as long as possible and maybe outlive what most would consider an inevitably short life given the track record of the women on my moms side of the family (all died before 60). Eating healthy and exercising is no guarantee that I will live past 50, but it can't hurt.

My goal, is to offer up my lack of self-control and the power that food holds over me, to God.. who created me and knows what my body needs to be nourished and at it's strongest and best capacity for spending a lifetime serving Him and training my daughter to do the same.

I have decided to do this in small steps.

Step # 1- from now until Christmas, record daily my food intake

I need to see what I am eating, how often I am eating and how much of it I am eating. I know that doing this will curb my eating habits if I know I have to write it down and SEE what I am doing to myself. So, this is step #1.

Life of change.

Life lived to the fullest.

All for His Glory.

Newness

Is that even a word? I hope so because I used it... 

This week has been a week of re-doing and making new what was faded, old and untouched. 

• A new set of windows to replace my duct taped, leaking, airy windows in the living room. 
• A set of new screens for all of the windows / screen doors on our house. 
• A new roof to replace our 13-year old hail and sun damaged roof. 
• A fresh coat of paint in the living room to cover up the water marks from our once leaky roof. 
• A fresh coat of paint on our front door and on our shutters which has dramatically changed the appearance of our home.
• A new air blower motor in our furnace to replace a dying and very loud motor before the cold weather is here to stay. 

In all of this newness (I just had to use that word again!), I am reminded of just how important it is as the keeper of my home to maintain a budget, an emergency fund and a mind set of responsibility with money just for times like these that require expensive fixes that come along with a home that is aging and breaking down. 

It also helped me to see that just like this home, I will require fixing and replacing and fresh coats of paint in my heart throughout my life... all with the hope that at the end of the day when the time comes to move out of this house into my new home in Glory, my market value will have increased and I will have many things to take with me to Glory that money could never buy on this earth.

The Truth: The House has not cleaned itself

The truth is that I had to return my HTCI book back to the library.
The truth is that I purchased the book for my Amazon Kindle for PC and have it available to me.
The truth is that I have not finished, or even started, the prayer walk and the next step.

However!

The truth is that the first couple of steps gave me so much inspiration that I have begun to clean out and organize our home a LOT over the past few weeks. I am hoping to jump back into the book and finish it out the way it is supposed to be done, but it has not happened yet.

I am loving being a stay at home mom, but it is so challenging to make sure that I do not fall into a trap of laziness and disregard for my new position within my home. I love all things internet. I love discovering new websites, new blogs, new deal sites, new ways to shop and save. I love emailing, I love catching up on all of my friends and family on facebook. I spend far too much time on the computer and this has creeped into my day with Emma. I am finding that I am not nearly as engaged as I would like to be and need to be.

I am finding myself more and more challenged these days to be the person that I should be. In the past two months, we have passed the 3 and 4 year mark since our mom's lost their battles with Lymphoma and a brain tumor/esophogeal cancer. Sometimes it only takes a thought during the day to remember that life is very short and that we are here for a moment. I need to make my moments count and I need Emma to know that I spent every moment I could with her while I had moments on this earth and while she still was willing to spend time with me :)

My life is in need of a major overhaul... the domestic life is much more challenging than the ins and outs of a career life outside of the home. Time for change. Serious Change.