January Cleaning

I know it is February, but just go with it. I don't know what it is/was about January that makes everyone feel the need to change something. The Y is packed with people exercising, my favorite (and only) yoga class was crammed with new people, who could not balance, and the grocery store had coconut water front and center. While I didn't fall for the start exercising more/eating healthy bandwagon, I did feel the need to clean out some of the clutter surrounding me.

Now that I spend more time at home and in the car, the piles of stuff are starting to get to me. My car has never been so clean. I actually take all the trash out every other day. This is a total revelation as pre-June I just waited for Alex to clean it out. It always bugged him that I would have trash in the open center console of my car and when he would drive it on the weekends, he would always clear it out. But now; now that I am in my car constantly shuttling children, and myself, that console is almost always clean.

In the house, the area that bothered me the most (because there are many areas) was near the computer. We have a small built in desk that routinely gets piled up with papers and "to do" items.

Glorious right? On the wall to the left I had a combo cork board and white board. Back when I was making all of Zach's food I kept a list of what purees I had in the freezer and a full list of our other freezer items. 2009 Kinsey was so crazy. And basically nothing has changed on that board since 2009.

I couldn't figure out what to do to make this area functional. I thought about pockets for papers, but if something is put away I think it is done. I have to keep it front and center. Then I spotted some 12x12 cork squares at Office Max.

Figuring I am incapable of leaving well enough alone, I decided to paint them black and cut them out in each person's initials. I thought of just doing Wall - you know I love a good pun, (get it Wall on the wall?) but I really needed this to be functional, not just clever (only to me, I know).

I free-handed our initials backwards on the tiles and cut them out,with some help from my trusty assistant.

You know this stressed me out, him wanting to cut my project, but I didn't let it show (much) and he did a great job for about 30 seconds until he decided it was too hard to cut the cork.

I stuck them up with the provided double stick tape and we were all set!

So far, they are working well. I pin up any notes or reminders for the boys, Alex and myself and I have to stare at them enough that I remember to do them, keeping the area to the left of the computer moderately clean. Moderately.