Dusting off this old thing

Woo hoo, back from the dead!

I'm really unhappy with my current house. The house itself is fine, but the amount of STUFF everywhere makes me claustrophobic. We moved in 2010 (blogged about it, once upon a time) and again in 2014, and each time the new house was a bit smaller than the old one - I think we've lost close to 500 square feet between the two moves, but we didn't make much effort to downsize our belongings accordingly. In fact, I have no doubt we've acquired MORE and BIGGER stuff in the past couple years. So we have 1900(+)sf of stuff crammed into 1400sf of space (and a two-car garage we can't park in).

A week or so ago someone turned me on to a blog/site called A Slob Comes Clean. It's a combination of "getting control of basic housekeeping tasks" and decluttering, which is the story of my life. I started reading at the beginning and I'm working my way forward - I'm almost through the first year. It's AMAZING. I thought I was the only person in the world who struggled with basic housekeeping, who had selective vision about messes and clutter, but it turns out I'm NOT. I relate so much to the journey that the writer is on. She started blogging in 2009 and is still going, so I'm interested to see how she progresses over several years.

Anyway.

The good/bad thing about discovering a blog all about decluttering is that now I'm looking at everything in my house through the lens of "but do we really need this or is it just taking up space?"

• Take our collection of VHS tapes. We've got a 50", 4K HDTV in our living room. Regular DVDs look bad, VHS looks HORRIBLE. Like headache-inducingly blurry and grainy. I think we've watched ONE VHS in the 2.5 years we've lived in this house. Some of these probably haven't been watched in 6-7 years or more. "But we've spent so much money on them, and they still work! Getting rid of them would be a WASTE." Uh, no. We have definitely gotten our money's worth out of these tapes in the past 15 years. "But what if I have a sudden, desperate urge watch The Craft?" Honestly, I would happily pay the $3-10 to either rent or buy it on Amazon Prime and enjoy it in HD (in fact I've already done that with a couple of my favorite movies). I'm not sure how many tapes we have in total, I think there are still some in the garage (from when we moved, 2.5 years ago!), but getting rid of just what's inside the house would free up 3 shelves in the bookcase and also the spot in the TV stand where the VCR is gathering dust.

• Or the Magic Bullet Blender thingy. It's one of those gadgets that seems Super Convenient(!) and we're going to use it All The Time(!!) when in truth someone uses it about once a year and the rest of the time the box sits on the floor in the kitchen because we don't have cabinet space for it. And worse, my family's general slobbishness/selective vision means when it does get used and the pieces washed, they generally end up sort of near the box instead of properly in the box. Which means they inevitably get kicked around the kitchen for a while before finally being scooped up and washed AGAIN because now they're gross from being on the floor. The once-a-year convenience is not worth the increase in blood pressure that seeing that box on the floor on a daily basis is causing me.

The good thing about this blog that I discovered is that in her own efforts she is putting a really heavy emphasis on baby steps...being methodical, not maniacal. Which is a reminder I definitely need.

One other thing I'm going to be trying here shortly is Bullet Journaling (I'll (probably) write about that separately, another time), and I'm going to try keeping a list of things around the house that are good candidates for purging/areas that are ripe for decluttering. First three on the list: Old VHS. Outgrown board games. The bookshelf in Josh's room.

Something worth blogging about

...although if you're friends with me on FB, this is already old news.

WE GOT A KITTEN!  And he is a treasure.

His name is Sammy, short for Samwise (from LOTR) because Samwise is a heavy name for a 9-week-old kitten.

In other, completely unrelated news...in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a terrible, terrible blogger. My attention span is just too damn short, I guess, because I think of clever/funny/interesting things all the time during the day , and they're gone by the time I actually get to a computer. BUT I'm going to try and get better by following in the footsteps of my sister-in-law, Amber, who is only a few days shy of blogging every day for an entire year.  I haven't decided if I'm going to keep this yawnfest or start over from scratch...what do you all think?

Uh oh....

(Hey look! I'm not dead. Anyway, as I was saying...)

Do you see this???

I want this.

It's so...shiny.  And girly. And see what it says at the top, there?  INAUGURAL. It's the first one EVER.  

And, apparently, the Tink in the middle spins.  I swoon.

Plus? A bunch of my very favorite internet gals, who I've never had a chance to meet in real life yet, are probably going to do it, too. It'll be like a party!

The catch?  Oh, not much...just that I'd have to...run. Like...far. 13 miles or something. Hmmm.

Oh, and also there's the small matter of...it's at Disneyland, which is in California. And I'm not. So...plane fare and junk, on top of the registration. 'Spensive.

But...so shiny...

Suck Less, Fiona.

You may recall, back before I got totally distracted by packing up my house and unpacking it all again, that I had started a new exercise program, involving sit-ups, push-ups and squats, with the end goal of being able to do 200, 100 and 200 of each, respectively. Well, that lasted all of three weeks, but my friend *H* was inspired to start it herself, and she has had awesome results.  She added some extra core work and tagged it the Suck Less Program, and at the beginning of April, she initiated a little something she calls the Suck Less Challenge.  I'm a little late to the party (shocking), but I am on board and did a new initial exhaustion tests this morning:

• squats - 40
• sit-ups - 30
• push-ups - 10 (girl style. I attempted one "real" push-up, and failed. Spectacularly. I think I nearly dislocated my elbow on the down motion. I will stick with the girl push-ups for a while, thanks.)
• tricep dips - 5 (the hundredpushups.com guy just added these! Score!)

H's "extra core work" that I alluded to above is to get into this plank position...

...and hold for as long as you can. 25 seconds, a minute - whatever you can manage.

***Funny story:  You may be more familiar with the version of plank that looks more like the top of a push-up, with arms straight instead of forearms on the floor. Well, when H decided to add plank to the Suck Less Program, she read online that the above format was considered a "modified" version and assumed that (and I quote) "modified = sissy."

Not.so.much. That up there? That's HARD. Way harder than the straight-arm version. 

Push-up style plank, I can hold for a minute without (too much of) a problem. Forearms down? 15 seconds. My friend H is totally hardcore, and didn't even know it. Hee!

Anyway, I'll be doing the Suck Less Challenge 3 days a week, and on alternating days I'm going to be taking another stab at the Couch to 5K learn-to-run program (the last time I tried, my ankle was still having none of it). I'm determined to make it happen this time, though. I know that Day 1 of the program calls for intervals of 30 seconds running/90(?) seconds walking. If my ankle won't tolerate 30 seconds running right out of the gate, I'll do 15 second intervals. Or 10. Whatever it takes. But I WILL make it cooperate somehow!

6 weeks to sucking less...bring it on.

A different kind of hooping video

A couple times in the past year I've posted some hoopdance videos that really struck me as amazing (you can check them out again here and here) - but this...this is a hoop of a different color.

Watch this, and tell me you don't laugh out loud...or at least snicker under your breath.  LOL!

Barn Olympics

Part of working for the family business is that you take on duties that you'd NEVER consider doing in a "normal" job. In my case, this means helping out with the least glamorous but most necessary task associated with running a large public boarding stable...cleaning stalls three days a week. (I'll spare you all the gory details...for now...Mwahahahaha. Ha.) Busy hands but idle brain leads to stuff like...this.

Welcome to the Stablehand Olympics!

Event #1: Speed Cleaning. Speed event. Completely strip and re-bed dirty stall(s).  Competitors can elect Sprint (one stall), Middle Distance (5 stalls) and/or Marathon (15 stalls).


Event #2: Team Hay Stacking. Teams of five members unload 200 bales of hay and stack in the barn. Points awarded for speed and presentation, deducted for excessive chaff dropped on the ground. 

Event #3: 100 Yard Water Bucket Dash. Speed event. Carry two five-gallon buckets 100 yards, each filled with four gallons of water. Time added for spillage.

Event #4: ?????? 

house house house house house!!!

We. Have. A. House.  I'm about to faint with relief. It's everything we could have hoped for and then some...it's the only place we'd found that actually has a TWO car garage!  Here are a few pix I "borrowed" from the Craigslist ad, until I get a chance to take some of my own...

 

The front...we will be on the right half. Note all the awesome trees (love trees)...and the giant road? That's cause we're on a cul-de-sac.  Score!

The view when you walk in the front door. Working wood fireplace, not that we'll ever use it. Brianna's room will be directly to the right (before the stairs - with her own 3/4 bath!), nice size family room past the stairs...can't remember if there's a door to the backyard or not? Hope so. Laundry room beyond that, and garage access (did I mention it's a TWO car garage?  So happy).

Probly gonna have to do something about the no-railing on the open side of the stairs. It bugs me.

All new kitchen!  With a breakfast bar! Pretty!  Even though I'm generally not a huge fan of light wood, I really dig the grain of the cabinets - hickory, I think the guy said. The only random thing is that when they redid it, (I'm guessing) they opted for more cabinet space and so the fridge is in the dining room (basically right where the photographer is/was standing).  It's not a huge inconvenience, it's just...random.

This picture I took when we toured the house last week:

Main floor living room. New hardwood or Pergo/laminate, not sure which (don't care, either...it's mostly going to get covered by area rugs as soon as we can afford to buy some). Really nice sized room - enough for the TV console, couch, etc. AND probably the treadmill. Or something.

The "main" (upper) floor also has the master bedroom, dining room (tile floors - gonna need a rug there, too), a pretty nice full bath and the smaller second (Josh's) bedroom. And a deck!  And apparently there's a fire pit in the backyard, somewhere under all the snow.  Walking/biking trail right across the back boundary of the property, and we're only about 3 miles from my grandparent's house on Lake Minnetonka. Guess where we're going to be hanging out all summer??  :oD

I'm SO excited. In case you couldn't tell.