Balance

Welcome 2011!!!  I hope you all had a fabulous New Years!  I love the feeling of having a fresh start on things and am determined to actually follow through on my goals this year {for some reason "goals" sounds better than "resolutions"!)}.  This year is going to be all about balance.  Balance between work and play.  Between family and a little "me" time.  Between cleaning and enjoying life.  Between healthy food and those oh so wonderful indulgences {which I have definitely been having WAY too much of lately!}.  The concept seems so easy yet this is always something that I have struggled with.  I have a feeling though that 2011 will be my year!

As I was writing down all of my hopes for the year, my list started getting way too long.  Not really keeping in line with the whole "Balance" idea.  So, I decided to break my list down.  One main goal per month.  Some goals will need to last only for the month.  With others, I am hoping that concentrating on that one goal for a month will help it become more of a habit and easy to continue with. 

I am starting with my most stressful situation first: organizing the house.  Overall, my house does not appear to be in bad shape.  However, there are a few notorious places that must be {finally!} dealt with.  The first is our garage.  It is a dumping ground for absolutely everything.  Sporting equipment, tools, gardening materials, cleaning supplies, seasonal storage, extra food storage, and just JUNK!! Normally I am able to squeeze my car in with a few inches to spare but, unfortunately, it has had to spend the past month out in the cold.  

I would love a garage that looked like this:

Or this:

Really, I don't want to be spending a ton of money on my garage.  I can think of a lot of other places that I would rather spend it!  I will be happy with neat and organized. 

My second in-house dumping ground is the basement.  Most of the basement is finished but we have one large, unfinished room that is totally overloaded.  This is where we have our old memorabilia {this is mostly due to my husband who cannot seem to give anything away from his past}, a huge amount of books that will probably never be read again {also thanks to my hubby}, old toys and clothing from the kids that are either waiting for my youngest to grow into or waiting to be sold on craigslist, tools and home repair items, camping equipment, and last {but certainly not least!} all of my crafting supplies and unfinished projects.  The room is large but not that large and a lot of the items end up drifting out all over the family room {especially my crafts!}

My top priority with this space is to actually create a functional craft area.  I spend so much of my time trying to find things that I think I have stashed somewhere.  And really, how inspiring is a junk filled room? {Did I mention this space is also shared with our cats litter box?} 

I have been dreaming of a nice craft room for years.  I love this one from Pottery Barn:

Or this one from Ikea (image from Cottage Magpie)

I love the colors in this one:

The photo is taken from this HGTV link.  There are some other amazing rooms there if you are looking to create one for yourself.

Now, I am not expecting that mine will look anything like these by the end of the month.  Again, I am just wanting to organize everything at this point.  But I will keep these in mind for future plans!

So, these will be my first two areas to start with.  My plan is to do a minimum of 30 minutes per day {I am aiming for at least an hour on my days off} working on these areas.  I have a very poor attention span when it comes to cleaning and get very easily sidetracked so I will be setting a timer to make sure I stay on task for the whole time.  Items will go into a garbage, keep and organize, Goodwill or sell pile.  Everything that is not sold by the end of the month will be given away.  

Now in keeping with the balance theme, I will try to put these nasty areas out of my mind when I am not working on them and not let them stress me out!  That will be my fun and family time!

I will keep you updated on how things are going.  I would love to hear what your goals are for the new year!

All the best in 2011!!!