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.

The House That Cleans Itself - Part 1 & 2

So, as my previous post mentioned, I have been reading the book The House That Cleans Itself. It has produced a lot of change in our house, so I decided to blog my progress as it happens.

Step 1 in the book is to draw a floor plan and determine flow pattern of our home.

I happened upon a website that allows you to lay out the floor plan of your home and fell in love with it. I had so much fun drawing up the floor plan of our home, inside and outside. It really gave me a sense of just how much God has entrusted us with. We have been in our home for 7 years now and it hasn't been until this point that I have really started to look at this house as our home, and not just the place where we sleep and wait for our next house. This is big for me! It made a huge difference in how I view my home.

The website for the floor plan is: floorplanner.com   It took me over a week to finish the floor plans due to many interruptions by a very curious 16-month old and a husband that required a lot of computer time over the last few weeks... but I did it! I printed off two copies of them as the book suggested and set about determining our flow plan. Below is the result:

Step 2 - Decide on your base zone

Step 2 asks us to choose a base zone... one zone in our house that when it is completely clean it makes our whole life better and when it's dirty, it makes me feel irritated or stressed. I asked Chris what he thought this room would be for him. We had different answers! For me, it was the kitchen. If my kitchen is clean, I feel like the whole house is clean. For Chris, it was our master bedroom.. if our bedroom is clean, he sleeps better and feels like he is in the most comfortable and relaxing spot in the house.

Once I chose our base zones (I was kind of hoping they would be the same one... so much for that!), she asks us to purge and clean that zone. For me, this is still a work in progress but I have at least managed to complete this task in our bedroom... it took an entire week of sorting through every single thing in our closet, moving clothes out, putting summer clothes in, re-arranging our hanging clothes, cleaning the bathroom from top to bottom, making the bed EVERY morning, vacuuming as often as possible, washing the dog bed, cleaning the walls, changing the light bulbs... I purged and cleaned like a mad woman. I have also started this in the kitchen but it is a much more difficult and tedious process as we have a lot of things stuffed into a very small space.

I forgot to take before pictures of the bedroom and kitchen... I will do this after Step 3 since she asks us to let things go for 2-3 days without cleaning anything ... that should be fun.

The next step is a prayer walk through the house... I am very interested to see what that's all about!  I will say that this has inspired me a LOT to keep things clean ... I am really enjoying this so far and it has really caused me to see just how blessed we are!

Your mission...should you choose to accept it

 One of the areas I really struggled with (you can read my previous post!) is that of my home and maintaining it. That brings us to this book:

That brings us to today. This book is great! I have only just begun it a week ago and it has already made some very good changes in our home. I am excited to see the differences that will take place through this journey. I have a deadline of 2 months before it has to be returned to the library so that will keep me motivated I hope :)  Anyway, we have been having fun with this and it has continued to improve the mood in our home.

Another big change is that for the last 2 months, my best friend and I have challenged each other to each make a list of goals for the month and each day we are required to send an update of how we did the day before. This has made the BIGGEST difference in our home. My husband made the comment last night that he is proud of me because for the last 2 months, I have been a new woman and he has noticed a lot of changes in my heart, in my life and in our home.

I hope that you will continue to join me on this journey of the domestic life as it applies to me. God is certainly doing a work in me and I am greatful because it means that He can still use me. :)

Mission: Organization

Organization in my home is by far the one area that I lack talent in. My husband prefers a very clean house, as do I... however, two years with each of us furnishing our own apartments and eight years of marriage that now include a tiny 20-pound being that requires ten times more stuff, our house is rarely what I would classify as very clean. Cluttered, messy, dis-array.... these are words I would use to describe our house.

Sure, when you come to visit our house, it appears clean. That is because I have just shoved everything I could into every closed door space that was available.

It is not that I do not care, because I care very much. It is not that I don't have the time, because most of the time I have a little bit of extra time to straighten up and make things look nice. It is that I can't arrange things in my mind and then bring it to life outside of my head. I was not gifted with the talent of being able to look at a corner of my house and come up with some brilliant idea to organize an area that will remain fairly organized. Instead, I just browse the stores and find something that looks like it could create some organization, buy it, and try it. Therefore, my house is not themed, or decorated well enough to invite a Better Homes & Garden tour. In fact, it looks like we are still in college in this house. Concert posters mixed with family pictures, mixed with our own artwork, mixed with rugs that don't match each other or the walls, mixed with furniture that doesn't match anything, mixed with the piles of toys and junk mail and everyday papers that are laid around every day.

If I were made of money, which I am not, I would pay someone to come in and decorate my house and organize it all so that it would be what I desire and leave me with the ability to just have to maintain it all. Coming to the realization that I am not an organizer has been difficult for me, and for my husband. In the work place, I was very organized... but a tiny office is an easy task to keep organized. A large house with two adults, a tiny pack rat and a large hairy dog? Not so much.

So, how do you keep it all together? What are your organizing tips? How do you keep your house organized enough to know where the scissors are and where the light bulbs are? How do you ensure that your children do not get lost in a pile of junk in your home?