Kitchen and Closet Organizing Disaster

Okay, so you would think that organizing your kitchen and organizing a closet is no big deal right?  Well, for most people, maybe it's not a big deal.  For me it caused a near melt down.  I'm not even really sure if it was Monday or Tuesday, this week has been a little bit crazy.  So let's start with what happened in the kitchen...I needed to organize my silverware drawer, my cooking utensil drawer, tupperware drawer, and my vinegar and oil/junk cabinet.  Well, let me just tell you what was lurking in there...glasses that I had kept of Rob's grandma's, my grandma's (who was killed in a car accident in 2006) cookie cutters, the kids baby spoons, various oil and vinegars from various failed diets, and junk, junk, junk, and a little more junk.  I decided that since we have lived here 2 years and never used Rob's grandma's glasses, very fancy glasses, that it was time to part with these, they were taking up two shelves in a room where I have very little real estate...and that is hard.  It is hard to part with something that meant something to you.  It hurts to get rid of a little piece of them and it hurts to remember them.  And this was a woman I had only known since 2003.  My grandma's cookie cutters stirred emotions in me that were like a knife in my heart.  Growing up my grandma made cookies for every holiday and I miss her.  I miss her every holiday and everytime I read her bible and everytime I see something of hers, I miss her and it hurts.  It hurts just as much now as it did then. She was such a HUGE part of my life.  And it is hard to get of baby spoons, when they were your babies spoons, its hard to process that they no longer need baby spoons, and it's hard knowing that these babies are the last babies you will have.  And oh, my the old vinegars and oils.  Well, they may as well slapped me in the face and said, yeah, you're not going to lose anymore weight, and look at how much money you wasted on us. Same goes for the junk, why in the world did I buy or keep all this junk. It's hard to face sometimes, all these emotions that can come up when we really dig in and start trying to clean up and organize things.  I think this is a huge reason people or at least people like me put things like this off.  Getting rid of things is hard.  Seeing how you let something get so messy is hard.  Admitting failures and moving on is easier said than done.  And all of this from cleaning a few cabinets in the kitchen.  I swear, I almost felt like someone on the show hoarders...I wanted to go stomping out of the house screaming, I can't do it.  Just leave my stuff alone.  It's my stuff.  But thankfully, I kept it together.  In the closet I was greeted by old clothes that are still too small to wear, trinkets bought as souvenirs that never left the closet, Sydney's baby things, leftover Arbonne from when I thought it was a great idea to sell it, and a general mess.  It's just a huge struggle to get slapped in the face with so many failures in such a small little space.  It took everything I had to get through cleaning these two areas of my home.  But now it is done, and I feel so much better.  I feel like I processed through the emotions of all of this and have a new commitment to losing that weight.  I will so wear those shorts from my skinny days again.  I will make better decisions on everything I buy.  I don't want to be back here in five years wondering why I ever accumulated so much junk and wasted so much money.  Facing your fears and failures head on really does make you a stronger person and that's the life lesson I received this week while doing a seemingly mindless task.   It's amazing how writing a blog makes you process things differently. 

Clearing out the Clutter

Since I got back from the Smokin Hot Mama Retreat two weeks ago I have focused on clearing out the clutter.  Out of my house, out of my car, out of my head.  I've made a discovery.  It is easier to function in life without so much clutter in my head and in my house.  Let's start with the mental clutter.  For a while now, I have had in my head that my mother in law looks down on me for staying at home with my kids and for buying yellow box flip flops, a kinda pricy brand of flip flops that I LOVE...I had thought for months about trying to talk to her about some things and could never quite get the courage to because "she kinda scares me a little bit".  I totally say this tongue in cheek.  She is a wonderful woman and one I admire very much, but she is also one that I don't want to make mad, and I value her opinion of me, so I was scared to say some of the things I wanted to say because I thought I might make her mad...  I let this clutter my brain up.  So, I decided when I got home to write her an email to tell her some of the things I wanted her to know.  And her response was everything opposite of what I had been thinking she was thinking.  And here I had let this clutter my brain for months, thinking that she was thinking poorly of me and mad at me, when that was anything but the case.  I have also been dealing with some health insurance drama that is a long story.  But what it boils down to I could stick my hand in the sand and not make a few phone calls to get some answers to questions and worry for the next 6 months or I could make a few phone calls and possibly here some answers I didn't want to hear.  Well, I tackled those phone calls, and turns out I have nothing to worry about, everything is fine with my current policy, and they can't cancel me in 6 months like I thought.  And again, I could have spent the next six months off and on worrying about something that there is no need in worrying about. 
Now let's move along to the house.  I am starting to see that how I keep my house, greatly effects my mood and my stress level and even my relationship with my husband.  There is just something soothing about walking into a bedroom at night and seeing a bed that is made and the room is neat.  I used to never make my bed, my thought was, what's the point, nobody's gonna see it and I'm just gonna mess it up again tonight. There is also something refreshing about opening my medicine cabinet and knowing exactly where to look for the cold medicine instead of getting the feeling of searching for a needle in a haystack.  And my kids are having a blast playing in Griffin's cleaned out closet that is no longer bursting at the seams.  Sydney calls it her dog house.  For me a clean house is easier to function in.  Things don't take as long to find.  Things don't take as long to put up when you aren't trying to cram them into a cabinet, closet or drawer that are stuffed to the gills.  There is less stress when there is less mess.  And you can ask my mama...this isn't something that comes naturally for me.  But unfortunately, yes I'm gonna say it.  My mama was right.  It is easier when you clean as you go...This isn't something that happens over night.  I still have a long way to go.  But, I am now finding when I go to my room in the afternoon to put up laundry, that I look at the bed and think...hmmmm I don't even remember when I made the bed.  There are a few things that have helped me in getting organized.  One, my sister in law's mother once told me she uses the philosophy "Don't Pass it Up, Pick it Up"  and wow, try this for a few days and you will be amazed.  Instead of thinking I need to pick up those toys or I need to unload that dishwasher, I now pick up the toys or unload the dishwasher.  It's phenomenal really how this little saying has made my life so much easier.  The other thing I do is I play a little game with myself.  I say in the morning, okay, what about my house would I be the most embarrassed about if Rob's Aunt Cindy saw it if she stops by today.  (She's gonna kill me if she reads this, but I'm trying to be an open book so, there ya go)  You see Rob's Aunt Cindy keeps the cleanest house I have ever seen.  She and my mother are my heros when it comes to cleaning house, but my mom can't stop by any day because she lives in Wichita, so Aunt Cindy it is. 
So I know everyone doesn't tick exactly like me but maybe just maybe if you are feeling a little stressed out, worn out or out of control, you can clear out some mental clutter or literal clutter from you life and maybe one of my solutions to my struggles might help you too! 

Houston, we have a problem...

Okay, so last time I told you that I fell off the wagon.  It all started with two pieces of paper.  Two pieces of paper than gave me a whole lot of information I was not prepared to deal with.  Those two sheets of paper told me that I have digestive sensitivities to the following plus some I won't mention, it's a really long list.  Milk, all cheese, eggs, garlic, wheat, gluten, yeast, oatmeal, tumeric (the stuff in mustard), pineapple, honeydew melon, crab, and the list goes on.  I never counted but there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 things that I am either never supposed to eat or very infrequently.  Dairy was such a high sensitivity I was advised to never eat it.  Same goes with yeast and oatmeal.  This information was life a bomb blew up in my life.  These were things I was living on, and achieving weight loss on.  Milk and oatmeal in the morning.  Sandwiches at lunch.  It rules out bread. So I felt completely out of control.  These two pieces of paper told me something I didn't want to hear.  And I was faced with the choice of giving this all up or living with digestive issues which would prohibit me from being able to lose much more weight.  They were also causing inflammation in my body that was not allowing my muscle to recover like they should from my workouts, so I was having headaches and shoulder pain.  I found this out just before I left for vacation.  For three weeks I did a cleanse to repair my digestive tract.  And it was brutal.  But my pain lessened and I did feel better and I started losing weight again.  But it was so strict that I felt deprived.  So I went on vacation and I stuck my head in the sand.  I ate whatever I wanted.  And I gained a ton of weight in the two weeks I was away from our house.  We were in Springfield for Rob to work just before leaving.  Then when I got home everything seemed to spiral from there.  I felt spun out.  I felt out of control.  This spilled over into feeling out of control of our finances, out of control trying to keep the house clean, out of control making my children behave, out of control of the fact that my husband was having to travel so much, ok so you get the picture.   I allowed one area of my life to spill into all the others.  You see the problem was for 5 months I was all in.  All in on losing weight.  All in focused on weight loss and when I plateaued and found out about my food sensitivities, I wasn't ready to go there.  I had defined feeling good about myself as being successful at weightloss, and when I couldn't lose more I felt helpless and I gave up.  So, I'm having to learn how to control one of the not so finer sides of me.  I am having to learn a little balance in my life, a little discipline, and a whole lot of patience for my own failures.  Everything in life can't be all or nothing as I had made it with losing weight.  Everything in life can't be perfect, one of my packages, as Mrs. Pamela Crim calls them.  But if you stick your head in the sand, like I have a tendency to do and did with the eating, I can almost assure you that your problem or issue will get worse, like mine did.  So when it comes to weight loss you have to get rid of the all or nothing mentality that so many of us have.  I'll either be on a diet or I'll eat everything in sight. So don't start a diet tomorrow, don't start it on Monday, start now.  And actually don't diet.  Just decide right now that you are going to make a lifestyle change because this is the only way it's going to work. And start small, don't start by trying to take your biggest problem head on, start with something you know you can handle and have success at.  It turned around for me when we started the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Course. It gave me something else to focus on, it gave me a different way to define my success.  My focus shifted.  I found myself obsessing less and less about not losing weight.  And when I got control over this area, it trickled into other areas.  I'm back in control of my weight,I'm working out more and finally back to running, my house is neater than ever, I'm at peace with Rob traveling, I'm more patient with the kids (although, this area still needs work)  So look at your life, what small things can you conquer right now, today that might give you a jump start to conquering your goals, gaining control of your life? 

Alright, I finally did it...tonight's focus is Progress, NOT PERFECTION

I have been thinking of starting a blog forever.  I have been down a long road with the weight loss.  I've had lots of successes and lots of failures.  So my hope with this blog is that maybe I can inspire and/or help even just one person to start their own weight loss journey or their journey to become a better person.  I will talk a lot about weight loss but some just about how I am striving to become a better person.  So, let me start by saying I didn't have gastric bypass, I didn't do the hgH diet or take any sort of diet pills.  I did it the hard way.  Diet and exercise.  I did breastfeed for about half the time it took me to lose 57 pounds and at the very end I did a cleanse.  I started out my journey at 221 pounds.  Yikes I know.  But it is what it is.  The day after Thanksgiving 2010, I decided it was time.  It was time for me to be a better mother, time for me to be a better wife, time for me to be a better person.  And it was time for me to lose weight, or I was going to have to go back to work because my COBRA coverage was expiring on April 30.  And private health insurance companies don't like to insure obese people, especially ones with some not so great health history, albeit not related to being overweight.  So, I had a BIG WHY.  A big one.  That's your first step in this whole thing.  What's your WHY??  Do you want it enough to get out of bed and work out?  Do you want it enough to step away from the cheetos?  Do you want it???  Because until you want it, I mean really want it, you will never get there. What's your WHY?  My why was I knew from the day Sydney was born I was not going to be the fat mom.  I couldn't do that to her.  But I also knew I wanted another one.  So I lost down to almost what I was when I had her, got pregnant with Griffin, and managed to not gain nearly as much as I did with Sydney.   So that was my why.  The first thing I did was I slowly phased things out food wise.  I focused every day on not some specific hard diet, but instead on simply eating better than I did the day before.  This method gives you forgiveness to mess up.  If you mess up today, all you have to do to fix it tomorrow is eat better than you did today.  I did this on my own for a couple of weeks and decided with Rob that it would be best for me to work out with a trainer for a few weeks.  I signed up to work out with a trainer for eight weeks.  Here it's not that expensive to do.  We easily made up what we were paying for my training by not eating out.  My trainer recommended one of two diets.  Paleo or the Crossfit diet.  http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/cfjissue21_May04.pdf  Well, I couldn't see myself sticking to the Paleo diet.  I have enormous respect for those who can.  So, I chose the Crossfit diet, which to my knowledge is very similar to the Zone plan.  This plan worked very well for me.  I started out with one cheat meal a week, but occasionally had two when someone unexpectedly invited us to dinner.  I was, however, so serious at first that I did do things like say, yes we can come to dinner, Rob and the kids love pizza but I'm working on losing weight so I hope you don't mind  I'm just gonna drive through Wendy's and get a salad before we come.  I kept my eye on the prize for 5 months.  It wasn't easy but every week I lost weight.  Sometimes a little sometimes a lot, but always a little.  When I left for vacation in May I weighed 164.  That's where I'll pick up next time...the gaining back of 14 pounds, why I lost control...and how I have finally gotten back on the wagon and lost all but 4 of those 14 pounds.