Amazing Craft Room Transformation and a Huge Weight Lifted!

Life can really get in the way of our hobbies and relaxing down time! In the midst of a crazy whole house remodel, being a 24/7/365 caregiver to my sweet Mother before her passing and being a  homeschooling Mom can really create havoc. After my Mother passed away we had 48 hours to clear out her apartment before the end of the month came, so pretty much we just boxed up everything and brought it into my craft room/blogging office. 

 We just kept piling (boxed & unboxed stuff) in more and more of my Mother's belongings into the craft room/blogging office. And even more and more got shoved in there, the furniture went into a storage unit. We had taken moving boxes and just emptied drawers, kitchen cabinets, nightstands, closets etc. With no time to waste we got it all done (rent of $2,500 was due in 48 hours!). I am not sure that I would exactly call it "done" because now the hard part comes, sorting, purging, bill paying, donating, cleaning, crying, aching, sorrow...yes, all those things came about and allowed for healing. 

I was thankful that the homeschool young man spent some time with me over Christmas break digging through things and sorting piles (Keep, Not Sure, Donate, Giveaway, Send to Siblings, Trash, Give to Mom's Friends). I guess the more honest thing was the homeschool young man was my emotional support dog (hahaha, as I lovingly referred to him). He was my pack mule, hauling 30 gallon black trash bags out to the garbage, putting the 30 gallon white trash bags full of keep stuff to another room, hauling the XL moving boxes from U-Haul (BTW those are AWESOME an only cost around .30¢ each!) full of donation items out to a waiting truck and most importantly hugging Mom (me) when I found something that was special to my Mom and I would start crying. Below is a picture of my Mom with her favorite stuffed animal and buddy CHEEZE HEAD.

We got rid of the Donate, Giveaway, Send to Siblings, Give to Mom's Friends, and Trash in short time. It was the tedious sorting that became an exhausting process: what to keep, what else to purge, how long to keep important documents etc. Fast forward to life happening, my dear father-in-law became ill on again and off again and he passed away several months after my Mother did. So again began the process of Keep, Not Sure, Donate, Giveaway, Send to Siblings, Trash, Give to Dad's Friends. My mess in the craft room/blogging office sort of got put on hold for emotional reasons and life happening. 

With this death there was a farm and farm house that we had spent every Christmas of our dating/married life (all but one in which we went to my parents home in Texas that year with our newly adopted baby), we spent every Easter and every Thanksgiving in that house, my husband and all his siblings grew up there, all the grand kids and great-grand kids played there. Here is a photo of the homeschooled young man with his dear Grandpa teaching him about gardening. (sorry it's an old faded picture from a wall calendar that I made for all the grandparents many moons ago).

We enjoyed the beautiful views of the property from the swing, hubby and I spent hours of our dating years and early years of marriage in the machine shed working on Dune Buggy's. There was all that to clean out too, a huge farm machine shed, two car garage and a full basement, not to mention the 5 bedroom house. The siblings all worked together so well to get things under control, purged and sorted. The Lord blessed with the home and property selling very quickly, fast enough to shock everyone in a down housing market!

Moving on into the next phase of my craft room/blogging office clean up, it was daunting to dig through and sort everything. I would start sorting for a few hours and feel like I had made ZERO progress and just made more of a mess of things. I would stop for a few days/weeks and then start again, only to do a few hours, again more of a mess and feeling as though nothing was getting accomplished. Construction dust was all over from our recent remodeling project. It was just a mess and it was mixed in with all my blogging work piles and craft supplies. Something had to be done!

I truly felt that this was just a lost cause. While surfing the Internet the next day I came across a local professional organizing company. This was not just Jane Doe who likes to organize, this was the real deal!!! These people deal with true hoarding situations, situational clutter, bug infested properties,  death clean-outs, real estate staging, they help busy Mom's and kids with tons of toy clutter, and just general home and office organizing. I kept their number for a month or so, thinking, I can do this myself, why pay someone; that is so silly and frivolous to do!

Well, I finally made the call and hired the company for 5 hours, the Lord blessed my efforts of giving in to asking for help and I got 2 organizers for the price of 1. They were training a new gal and she came as a free apprentice. What a blessing! They were so down to earth and non-judgmental. We laughed and had a really good time! It was like having my girlfriends over for a decluttering party. 

You would not believe what we got done in that amount of time. It was scary though, they had a totally different game plan and approach than I was using in my past attempts at getting this mess under control. We started by emptying out the ENTIRE ROOM into my dining room!! So, you could not walk in my dining room, I kept thinking hubby is going to come home for dinner and freak out because the other room had exploded out into the dining room! 

Deep breath here, we then wiped down all the surfaces in the room, walls, windows, floors, baseboards etc. Then decided what furniture would go back in, wiped it all down, placed it back in the room. Then we went item by item and decided if it was TRASH, KEEP, DONATE, NOT SURE. They brought these huge black construction size trash bags and they even had cute shopping bags with handles for the donate items. We also utilized one of my all time favorite things; the curb side FREE pile (everything disappeared within 30 minutes of being drug out of the house!)

See how the room is really shaping up? I'm tellin' ya, call a professional, don't be embarrassed, do it NOW!!! CALL NOW OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! CALL NOW! 

I have a clean, empty, uncluttered surface to craft on, to scrapbook on, to do whatever I want on!

Really, you must look past the Bob The Builder blue & yellow paint, the homeschooled young man used this room when he was a little boy and hubby has yet to get around to painting this...LOL. So I just go with it! 

We incorporated a bunch of my late Mother's craft bins and craft items in along with my scrapbooking items. Plus, I had a ton of stuff leftover from teaching crafting classes and that all fit into these bins and the organizers labeled all my bins. They gave me ideas on how to store things more effectively. They hauled out all the trash bags for me and they hauled away all the donation items too! I was just left with this....

All my goodies had a home, the remaining items that I decided to keep from my Mother's stuff were put into a tote for me to go through when I was ready at a later date. The organizers found a lamp I was not using and they set it up, with an outlet strip (that was found in a drawer) for easy access to plug in my crafting toys, they organized all the bins, drawers and cabinets. They put together a display tower that I had in storage and got everything set up and ready for use! I did not need to buy anything, we just repurposed things that we came across around my house and/or in my Mom's stash.

All my cardstock, scrapbooking papers, rubber stamps, inks and ink pads, embossing folders, ribbon, glue, scissors and all that stuff was all organized into these bins (from my Mom and my stash). THEN THEY LABELED IT ALL!!!!!

In less than 5 hours....that is right, we were not even finished with the 5 hours yet! I know, totally unbelievable. So, they asked me if there was anything else that I wanted organized since we still had time left. I was just numb, I could not believe that we had done all this work already, after I had tried and tried to do it myself and just would give up after a few hours.

Onward we moved to some cabinets in my dining room and they straightened up our homeschool supplies, books, my junk cabinet (the one with hammers, screwdrivers, light bulbs, etc), then moved to the living room (which had been filled with boxes of my Mom's stuff and my craft stuff that I had started sorting and failed at). Now that the living room was uncluttered and the former items that were in the boxes were now beautifully organized into the above photos, the organizers then staged my living room furniture and rehung my drapes so they looked nice and fancy with crisp folds (like in a magazine!)

And then, just like that, it was time for us to say our goodbyes, we hugged and they left. With all the trash gone, no need for me to worry about dragging the donations somewhere; they were gone too. All that I was left with were a few cute bags with handles that were going to friends (homeschool blessings I passed on to some friends) and a small box containing gifts that needed wrapped for Christmas.

Praise the Lord! It was sure hard to make that call for help, that first step is always a killer one! However, my family is so blessed and so am I.

I left to get myself the best gluten free pizza in town and waited for my husband to arrive home. I got a text right away saying "Great job!" The homeschooled young man came home and told me that the house looked really great! So I would say it was a win-win situation and well worth the money!

Below I have included a few links (I received nothing in return for posting these links) for you to get the help you need. My clutter was deemed as "Situational Clutter" due to the deaths and home remodel that contributed to my clutter.

National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals
The Institute for Challenging Disorganization
Find My Organizer

This has been so freeing and such a burden has been lifted. God is a God of order and not of clutter and disfunction. I'm less tired now when I am at home, I don't dread my craft room/blogging office anymore. Lift your burden and don't be afraid, call a professional (cleaning ladies and maid services are not trained in handling clutter) and get it done!

Moe

Homeschooling Saves Tax Dollars

A mom in your neighborhood is preparing lessons to teach her children. In the minute it takes you to read this, moms all over the USA are using their "freedoms" and investing their own money in their child's literacy, prosperity, and future. This mom does this because she knows government run schools are not working anymore. She is saving millions in tax dollars by homeschooling her child.

Pray for a homeschool mom, love on a homeschool mom, and appreciate a homeschool mom!

I love this sign!!

Homeschooling from your bookshelves? It's possible come see how!.

Time to get ready for the new school year!!! Unless you school year round like us.
Well I'm all for frugal!
Most of us homeschoolers have enough materials on hand to educate a small army...lol.
This summer go through your bookshelves and make 3 piles:

THROW AWAY
KEEP
SELL/GIVEAWAY

Throw Away Pile: The first pile is just plain old junk, stuff that is used up, scribbled on, torn up etc. Get RID OF IT!! Including that workbook you bought on Ebay that smells like nasty musty YUCK!!

Keep Pile: This is stuff that you can use, organize it by subject, I like to buy magazine holders from the Dollar Tree or use cereal boxes with the top and side cut out and some cute wrapping paper to cover them. They are very durable if you put some clear packing tape on the bottoms. Use these for booklets, workbooks and things like that. Put subjects on them and on free days or Mom is sick days, tell our son to go and pick out an activity and spend an hour working on it. It makes learning fun because he can pick what he wants to do. Jot down what you have and later on in the summer when you really start planning out the coming school year you can see what you have to work with.

The sell/giveaway/trade pile is for stuff that is still usable, but you don't need it anymore or it did not work for your child. I have gathered up enough stuff to sell that I was able to buy some new goodies at the homeschool convention that I might not have otherwise been able to afford. The giveaway items are things that are still in usable condition that you can bless another homeschool family with. PaperBackSwap is another great way to get rid of books you no longer need. Check them out to see how they work. Or read my blog post on how it works.

By looking through what you have, you can make a plan of action for your coming school year. I am betting that everyone has at least 1 full subject that they can teach this next school year without having to buy a thing. Take some time and get digging around, see what you can find to
THROW AWAY
KEEP
SELL/GIVEAWAY

Post on here to let us know what you find!
Moe

Popular Blog Posts...Finger Pointer Thingy...

I am really surprised that this is one the most popular blog post!! It's very near and dear to my heart, but I was thinking that most people stopped by (over 100,000 of you!) to get the yummy recipes! But I guess I’m wrong. Here is on of the most popular blog post.

POKING FUN IN THE HOMESCHOOL

 With the Homeschooled Young Man going into his junior year of high school in the fall, I've been doing a lot of reflecting and thinking back on our homeschool years.

We have been downsizing our homeschool materials for an upcoming used curriculum sale and it has brought back some fond memories of days gone by.

Just today as I was sitting in my rocking chair, a chair that holds many fond memories (our church nursery was remodeled and they bought brand new rocking chairs and gave away the old ones. They were delivered to my house and what a blessing it was to sit down in one, pick up the phone and call my out of state friend and say "Guess what I am doing? I am sitting in one of the rocking chairs that we both rocked our babies in!" It was a precious moment, remembering those days, for her 19 and 16 years ago, for me, just 15 years ago.

Ok, rabbit trail here; back to the title of this blog post Poking Fun In The Homeschool...lol.

Finger Pointer Thingy

My son walked up to me this morning and poked me in the side with that finger pointer thingy. I am very ticklish and I was just giggling like a schoolgirl as he kept poking me with it. The more I laughed the more he poked. I was not so much giggling at the tickling as I was at not having seen that finger pointer thingy in a very long time! He came across it as he was digging through his closet the other day.

I remember the day I bought that Finger Pointy Thingy, we were at a Scholastic Book Fair sale and I was buying my teaching supplies, like a real teacher don't ya know? Hahaha, it was one of our first years of homeschooling, ya know the one where you have the Homeschool Momma jean dress on. Actually, I wore a cute denim apron that my Mom decorated up with buttons that had pencils, a school bell, books, and cute stuff like that sewn on. Watch out, we had the student desk, a decorated classroom, my student wrote with feet flat on the floor for penmanship, pets were banished from the schoolroom until school was over. Ya, you're gettin' it now! lol. Yes, I was one of those 8:20am-3:00pm homeschoolers in the beginning. We even had school colors and a school mascot, we were Home of the Pugs!

I had big plans for that Finger Pointer Thingy, it was going to keep my boy's eyes focused on the board, it was going to keep him engaged, and it was going to force information into his little brain! I was going to fill that bucket (child) up as full as I could with information that he could spit out on a test!! You bet ya! He was going to learn!

Long about October of that same year, the Homeschooled Young Man asked if he could do his history on the couch with the dog, I told him as long as he got his work done. Then next thing you know he was under the kitchen table (his all-time favorite place) on the floor with the dog doing science. A short time later, he discovered fort making with sheets, blankets, and kitchen chairs to study in. These shenanigans nearly ended our homeschool career before it really got off the ground when Homeschool Dad saw what was going on. Because you know, homeschooling dad's think that learning can only be done in a straight backed chair, a desk and feet flat on the floor.

Over time I sold the desk, took off my cute denim apron (I still have it), took down the classroom decorations and started HOME SCHOOLING. That is school at home, or better known in the teenage years as car schooling since we live in the middle of nowhere and I am driving the Homeschooled Young Man back and forth to job shadowing, 4-H, hospitals, doctor's offices, the medical school, and volunteering. We just pack up the schoolbooks, pile into the car and off we go! His chemistry book seems to be intriguing to many doctors and starts up some interesting conversations with them. They have shown him apps that they still have on their phones for the Periodic Table and chat with him about their own struggles in O Chem.

After attending my first homeschool conference, I also realized that teaching is not simply filling a bucket with information that can be spit out on to a test. That one really rang my bell.

My homeschool décor has also changed; I have cute laminated quotes and pictures all around our homeschool bookshelves. They perk me up on a long day and get me through the tough times.

The picture below is from WWW.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com I've had it for years on my refrigerator and no matter how bad my day is, I can look at it and just laugh, I don't know why it makes me feel happy, but it is just so funny!

You can see how our homeschool has evolved over time, changed and morphed into something wonderful and unique to our family, now do you see why I was giggling so hard when being poked with the Finger Pointer Thingy? It is amazing how a little Finger Pointy Thingy can bring back so many memories.