Profile by Sanford Planning for Appointments

Today is my third appointment, as I am two weeks into losing weight on the Profile by Sanford plan. (I should disclose that these are not sponsored posts.) To make sure I don't over or under buy production, I have been planning the night before my appointment with my coach.

I count all items I have left, excluding what I will need for the day I meet with them. So first I set aside the items needed for one day: 1 morning shake, 1 shake or soup for lunch, 1 bar for a snack, and 1 shake for the after dinner snack. Then I record the remaining counts in my notes on my iPhone:

As you can see, I also record things I tried and didn't like as well as any questions I have for my coach. This is very helpful when I do my shopping in the store, and of course my coach will help me make sure I have everything I need. 

I also make sure to fold up my reusable bag to fold up in my purse so I get an extra $.50 my purchase. 

My next step in being more organized is to make sure I am keeping better track of my free items. I know I had a few too many yesterday: 4 cups of decaf with Walden farms creamer, sugar free jello, seasoning on my fish, Walden farms dressing on my lunch salad. Not too bad but I'm sure not helpful either. The days that I precook or plan out dinner are days that are easier to keep track of the free items. Unless you cook your veggies and meat with no seasoning, you would always use at least one free items for dinner.

Fridge Envelopes

For my daughters party some years ago I made this craft. I thought it would be great for the kids lockers, but they wanted to play more then they cared about the crafts. Since then I have had them on the side of my fridge and find them very useful. The one on the left is full and disorganized but I use it for small papers I don't  want to lose such as business and appointment cards, receipts, small photos etc. The one on the right holds my box tops for education and if we collected pop tabs for Ronald McDonald (if we drank pop out if cans) then I would have collect them in here. One day I will be super organized, but in the mean time this is what works for me.

Tame It Tuesday

I saw a Pin about folding your shirts vertically so you can see what is on the front plus adds more room. It took me about 15 minutes to organize this drawer while putting away laundry. Before I had the shirts folded like the stores do, but I would have to rummage under them to find the one I wanted. It also filled this drawer to maximum capacity  Now I have a little bit of room to work with and I might be able to get rid of some additional storage. I looked for the original Pin, but I didn't find any tutorials just pictures. Just search shirt folding.

I also moved the kids books from the basement to the living room. I have a few books I am going to give my best friends daughter, and some I'm selling to Half Price Books. I also am taking out the holiday books to store in a tub by themselves. The piles on the floor here are what my kids had in their rooms. The two on the left are what they took out of their rooms. I told my son to look on top of his dresser, and on his night stand. The two piles are the left are what I took out of his room after he was done. I think my project this weekend will be helping my son organize his room. On the list is:

getting rid of too small clothes

sorting out the boxes of toys

cleaning bed linens

a good sweeping and washing of the floors

Household Coordinator

Source: someecards.com

(I decided I need fancy names for my household projects. So for my post on improving my money will be called Financial Expeditions, Organizing will be Household Coordinator, and Health will be Well-conditioned.)

As my husband was commenting on how he has been working 60 hour work weeks, I thought to myself "big deal." I bust my butt every week to keep this household together. He gets to come home, leave his job and doesn't have to answer the phone. I work 40 hours outside of the home, then I come home to do 80% or more of the household and child rearing. I make the appointments, buy clothes, co-ordinate schedules, make list of list, and entertain kids. So sorry if I'm not sympathetic. I think I did my wifely duty by just writing this on my blog and not telling him to his face.

..........................................................................................

As household coordinator, I have already developed a weekly list of chores, which I haphazardly follow. Now I need to come up with back up plans for when I'm out of town on the weekend or when I'm not able to clean during the week.:

Gone For the Weekend Chore List
Monday- living room dining room tidy up, dust, vacuum furniture and sweep floors
Tuesday- clean both bathrooms
Wednesday- clean kitchen, sweep floors
Thursday- tidy up basement, laundry clean and put away, balance checkbook, and plan meals

Weekend Power Clean
1. place all laundry downstairs and start a load
2. assist kids with cleaning bathrooms
3. run load of dishes
4. tidy up dining room and living room, dust, vacuum furniture, sweep floors
5. move laundry to dryer and add another load if necessary
6. kids clean their rooms, while I clean kitchen
7. laundry to dryer
8. kids move to tidy up basement, I mop floors
9. work on my bedroom
10. everyone puts laundry away

Another thing I would like to do is to make a more detailed list of cleaning rooms to follow, and to teach my kids more about what a clean room entails. My daughter can work two hours on her room and it will look like she has done nothing because she still have a mess all over the floor. I gave them list to check off the other day and it worked great so I would like to make more list for their chores so they have clear expectations.


Money report: $8.82 on lunch,bought Chinese at Hy-vee with a pop
Chore Report: swept floor made bed, ran dishwasher cleaned up living room/dining room, laundry down stairs
Health report: ran/walked tonight, drank pop :0C , and I am tired since I didn't get to bed by 10 because I stayed up to watch movies and woke up with a stuffy nose.

Easy Menu Plan for 7 days

As part of organizing my life I wanted to make an list of easy fall back menu:




Breakfast:
rotate between cereal, frozen waffles, toast with PB & J, oatmeal
Lunch:
leftovers
sandwich (tuna, lunch meat, or PB&J) with canned or fresh fruit
Parmesan pasta with broccoli 
mac and cheese
chicken cheese Quesadilla with salsa
frozen pizza
chicken nugget with fries
Dinner:
grilled cheese with tomato soup
chicken Alfredo (see #7) with baked beans
Sausage Stroganoff
ranch chicken legs and potatoes
tuna melts with carrots
pork tacos
Cajun Alfredo skillet

A List

So have you seen this posting on the  blogosphere : Project Organize Your Entire Life.  It is one thing to bitch about your life, and another to actually do something about your life.

These are the things I would like to change:
1. finance
2. weight/look
3. organization

Finance
I am getting better with making more money.  I recently traded one of the bills that I paid, grocery's, with my husband's bill of my car payment. It is very had to get a handle on grocery's and I think my husband is now realizing why we ate a lot of mundane, crappy food when I was feeling the wallet pinch. The car payment is $306 a month which is a large payment, but it is what it is for now. I plan on starting a dental hygiene program in the fall of 2014. I would like to make sure by that point, our bills can be paid by mainly my husband because the program only recommends working 15 hours a week. It will most likely be a low paying job because I found it hard to find a good paying job to begin with when I needed to at the time.  I will still need to put the kids in daycare I think, depending on my school hours and how much my daughter has matured by that point.

Weight/Look
I have been working on running in the half-marathon. A running book I read says that most women who start running programs, just maintain their weight the first year.  For a few weeks I have been being good, but then I slip back in to eating out and drinking pop. Did I mention that cans of soda are only 25 cents at my job? How tempting is that? I think I need to take this one meal at a time and find a group of rotating breakfast or lunches, that are low in calories which would free up more calories for dinner. It did seem that when I kept track of what I ate, I snacked a lot of calories so that would be my next step.  I think I also need to schedule in a cheat day, and reschedule it as needed. I tried to tell myself that I would only have pop on the weekends but I really need to go cold turkey with that. I wonder if those people who don't drink pop don't get value meals when they eat out? I might need to start ordering off the value menu.  Once I get my food on track, I hope that it will help clear up my skin since I have been having mad break outs lately. I also think I need my hormones checked. Becoming thirty has been hard!

Organization
I organized a lot when I was out of work, but the house still needs work.  I haven't gotten a handle on my schedule yet as far as cleaning. I think I need to come up with plan A, B and C. Plan A: daily cleaning schedule. Plan B: cleaning bare minimum. Plan C: Weekend or just a few days of the week to clean.  I also need to figure out the best chores for the kids to do and when they need to get them done. I did pick up a organizer with a handle and a colorful spray bottle for the kids to use when they clean the bathrooms.

I think my biggest downfall is my lack of keeping a plan. I don't know weather to tackles each one of these task one by one, or work on each one each week. I think I will mull this over and get back to myself by Monday.

Spring Cleaning Challenge- Day 5

Today I was week with motivation.  Day 1 of the challenge I started with the toy room in the basement, and had worked on it a lot day one and a little the following days.  I really wanted to get the kids bedrooms done today too, which they worked on a little bit, but they are not finished.  Around noon I finally got the motivation to finish it to 98%.

The second shot really shows how much open the space has become.  I need to get rid of the electronics on the desk and move the pillows to the couch from under the TV, but I hung out down here today and it was great.  We got the bean bag chairs for the kids for Christmas from Gordman's and they are really comfortable.  It is nice to have a basement to relax in during the summer because I don't like to keep the air conditioner running all day.  (It was getting hot today, and I refuse to turn on the air conditioner in March.)

This is now the dress up area.  I need to get pegs for this board to hang up the hats and necklaces and some other misc. items.  (I will update this picture when I do.)

This is my daughter's toy shelf.  I didn't want to spend a lot of containers so I used Girl Scout cookie boxes (Note: we didn't buy all those cookies, I was the cookie mom so I had stashes from booths and doling them out).  The top is barbie dolls and little toy girly dolls.  If you can believe this: all those thin mint boxes are littlest pet shop items mixed in with a few small my little ponies and Squinkies (plus I didn't take the game of littlest pet shop they were playing on the train table).  The other cookie box is for piano books for the keyboard to the left, and to the right is her craft table (too messy to show, I didn't want to mess up her constant work in progress).

This is my son's toy area.  I really like how the peg board weapon display turned out.  I am going to take a picture of how it looks when everything is put away and hang it above so he know what to do.  The shelf on the left holds superheros, box of balls, tool sets, smaller toy cars and the white box holds ammo.

This is still a work in progress but I am happy with what was done today.  I am going to call this good for this challenge and try to work on other projects.  

On a side note: We rarely have people over and then my husband came home and asked if it was OK if his friend and girlfriend came over.  I had been so busy with the basement, that the upstairs wasn't good-enough-for-me ready for company.  I was able to get the home clean in half an hour, and then they didn't come (but now I can relax for tonight :0).  I can say I am getting better at cleaning, and noticing things.  My goal is to be able to keep this up even after I start a new job some day.

See more who are working on the challenge at:

i Dream of Clean : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter

Amy’s Finer Things : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Home-EC 101 : Facebook : Twitter
Tidy Mom : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Untrained Housewife : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Live Renewed : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Biblical Homemaking : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Living Well Spending Less : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
The Greenbacks Gal : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Warrior Mama : Facebook : Twitter 

Spring Cleaning Challenge- Day 4

Yesterday I started work on the hall closet, but wasn't able to get done.  I wanted to get packing tape to tape boxes together to use instead of buying all new containers to put things into.  I was able to get out today and buy tape, plus I did end up buy two containers fore $3.67 each.  I really like the containers that Walmart has where the top latches to the container.  I also picked up packs of bins that were on clearance for $1 each.  They would be good for organizing desk drawers or for my kitchen drawers.  I also looked at bins to store toys inside, but they were $3.50/2, and seems smaller and more flimsy than the ones I already have.  I also put up the peg board in the toy room, but I want to move 1/2 of it to another space because I don't like how it looks.

I worked by pulling things out and placing them on a table in the living room.  My hallway it too tight to have the table in there so there was more leg work, but I didn't want to put things on the floor since the kids were home running around.

At the top I have my cleaning supplies, sorted by air & fabric refresher; spray cleaners, scrub brushes, and carpet cleaners.  The second 1: medicine, sunblock, hair care, and lotions.  Shelf 2:  lady's time of the month supplies, vaseline, wash cloths, cotton balls, and bars of soap.  Shelf 3:  hair accessories and brushes (3 ball jars for bands and clips, brushes, headbands and other in boxes), box for nail care, box for face care, box for body space and etc.  Shelf 4: bag of cologne sample and lotions, hair cutting, extra shower curtain.  The bottom I am keeping open for buckets for cleaning (right now they are helping me clean fish tanks).

In the end I had a box partially full of things that have other places to go, a cardboard box that has been following me around full of bathroom supplies since I got home from college in '03, and lots of garbage.

I also organized the cabinets in the bathrooms.  I put all the tooth care items in the half bath because this is where we all brush our teeth most of the time.  In the fake wood cabinet in the full bath, I kept the top shelf for my husbands shaving, the middle is for me which has my face cleaning cloth from Norwex, and the bottom is my daughter's with her hair brush and earrings.  In the metal medicine cabinet: tooth care on bottom, medicine and maintenance kit on top with my multivitamin and tweezers.  The wooden cabinet in the half bath: my women's needs (makeup, deodorant, perfume) and first aid and medicine on top, middle shelf has extra mouth wash and cups, my husbands deodorant and Q-tips, the bottom shelf is all tooth care.

I dream at night to be rich and be able to have a remodeled bathroom, with matching baskets to hold items.  I also wish to go through my hair care and lotion stash to get that down to a few and open up more space.  I think the latter is more likely to happen in the future, but I am super happy to know where things are and how much I have.  I am constantly buying things over and over because I don't know if I have them or not.  It is getting easier and easier for my to organize these days.  Before I would clean an area and get frustrated when I couldn't find something I had just seen while I was cleaning.  Now with the help of this blog as motivation and picture proof, it is helping me to find lost items and keep my sanity.

Next up: cleaning the bedrooms.

See more who linked up at the Spring Cleaning Challenge:

Spring Clean : The Why :: Home-EC 101 

Spring Clean: Floors and Windows :: Amy’s Finer Things
Spring Clean: The Kitchen :: Tidy Mom  
Spring Clean: Home Office :: Untrained Housewife
Spring Clean: Declutter Around the House ::  Live Renewed
Spring Clean : Main Living Area :: Biblical Homemaking
Spring Clean: Conquering the Kids’ Room :: Living Well Spending Less
Spring Clean: Outdoor Living Spaces :: The Greenbacks Gal
Spring Clean: Garage and Cars ::  Organize365

I'm also linking this up to Project Simplify '12.

Spring Cleaning Challenge- Day 2

Last night I was able to go out and buy some baskets from Dollar Tree for my wall shelf I'm going to put in the dress up area in the toy room.  I also went out and bought peg board from Menards.  It was there that I found out a '4x4' sheet won't fit in a Jetta, so I bought two 2'x4' sheets.  I will need my husband's help, but he is getting his oil changed at Walmart which takes about 3 hours when you don't make an appointment.  

Meanwhile, I was trying to put up the shelf and I thought my wall hanging supplies were in the junk drawer, but couldn't find them.  I figured this was the best time to tackles this project.  Above is the before picture.

Here is a shot of what I sorted from the drawer.  16 different categories, all of which had other homes.

This shot is what I put back inside.  My husband's checkbook (because I know he will question why I had to move it), a notepad, and my screwdriver kit that I am always needing.  I vacuumed and wiped down the drawer but it looks like it needs a new liner.  It didn't take me that long and with all the work I have been doing in the other areas of my home I was able to put things away in no time, and with little thought.  I just wonder how long this drawer will stay this clean.

To see more about the Spring Cleaning challenge check out these sites:

i Dream of Clean : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Amy’s Finer Things : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Home-EC 101 : Facebook : Twitter
Tidy Mom : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Untrained Housewife : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Live Renewed : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Biblical Homemaking : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Living Well Spending Less : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
The Greenbacks Gal : Facebook : Pinterest : Twitter
Warrior Mama : Facebook : Twitter 

Spring Cleaning Challenge Day 1

The right corner shows the totes I moved from the other room.

I started the challenge yesterday with cleaning my kid's toy area.  From the February cleaning challenge, I moved all the toys that I took out of the toy room from last year's Spring cleaning.   My sister also gave me an air hockey table that I would really like to set up and we got a keyboard for my daughter for Christmas.

I started with moving all the bins that I already have sorted to one side of the space. I was making sure nothing out of place was mixed into the bin (the top picture), while moving them to this space.  Then I also lined up empty bins to hold anything that didn't match or was too big for the sorted containers.

These are the after shots, which still looks messy but there is a lot of floor space that opened up.  I still have to dig under the tables to pick up the toys on the floor but I have only two small boxes of things that didn't get sorted because I wasn't really sure what there are or where to sort them into so I'm going to get my kids involved tonight.

Here are my current categories for toys:

• zhu zhu box
• lego books
• tool box
• tools and screws, small wood for foam wood
• baby doll items
• plastic animals
• plates, cups, etc for house play
• play-doh toys
• barbie, misc dolls for girls
• balls/ outdoor play
• train set
• weapons
• vehicles
• dressup

•  balls, bats, ect (yes more play balls)
• Lil pet shop bin (more on the table
• stuffed animals
• big toys
• wagon with rollar skates
• cardboard box with foam wood and projects from lowes

• top shelf is items to sort still
• stuffed animals
• blue bin is super hero
• pink bin in empty
• garbage can
• outdoor toys

Some thoughts at this point:

This video has great ideas on labeling toy bins.

I have a wall shelf that has a dowel under it, that I will hang on the wall for a dress up area.

I need to organize a space in the garage for kids toys, and move some of the balls out there.

I want to set up an area for my son's train set, cars, and tools, and another separate area for my daughter's Lil Pet Shop, barbie, doll, stuffed animal, plastic animals

I'm going to store the food and plates because I haven't seen them play with any of these things for awhile.

I'm going to put the play-doh with the board games.

I want to buy a peg board to have my son's weapons hung on the wall.  

The big TV in the middle of the floor is going on Craig's list for free because it is a really old 32".

I will also donate another TV to Goodwill since they only take good condition TVs with remotes.

I hope to have more updates for tomorrow.

See more who linked up at: i Dream of Clean