Tuesday Weigh-In

We meet again, Tuesday.  This time, with much better results!  The scale moved {in the right direction} this week!  Yay!  Go me!  I’m pumped and totally ready to do this!  That being said, I still didn’t reach my end of January goal weight due to the excess slacking I did the entire month! Grrrr…..:-/

12/18/12 Weigh-In (WI):  173
01/08/13 WI:  171.5 (-1.5)

01/15/13  GW:  170  WI:  173 (+1.5)
01/22/13  GW:  168.5  WI: 174.5 (+1.5)
01/29/13  GW:  167  WI:  172.5 (-2!!)

I know, I know, I’m a broken record, but I’m going to give it another try for the month of February next TWELVE weeks and I would like you to join me!  Over the weekend, I stumbled upon this incredible workout tracker from Design Finch.  Look at how fun it is!  Doesn’t it just make you want to work out?! Click the picture to go grab it from Design Finch!

I printed it out Saturday and did my first workout on Sunday.  Oops, I didn’t realize it started on a Monday. Oh well – bonus workout for me!  Side note --- I used to be really picky and only liked calendars that started on Sunday, but now that my oldest is in school, I think I might prefer the Monday start.  Does this make me weird? 

So this is what I’ve worked out for my weekly workouts:

Monday – cardio

Tuesday – strength

Wednesday – cardio

Thursday – cardio

Friday – strength

Saturday – cardio

Sunday – strength/rest?

I’m aiming for a minimum of 30 minutes of cardio at least three days per week and am hoping that since I wrote it down on four days, I’ll actually do it four days.  Right now that means I’m going to continue the Couch to 5K on my treadmill.  If I’m not doing the C25K that day, then I will use the iFit programming that came with my treadmill.  I love it.  It’s an interval walking workout by Jillian Michaels. 

As for strength days, I know that I need to start incorporating strength training into my workout regimen so I added in two strength days and possibly that third one on Sundays.  I also know that rest days are important so I’m just going to see how Sundays play out.  I will mostly be using the Spark People strength videos or any others I may find while perusing the internet. 

This past week I did great at getting in my water and being more mindful of my food intake.  I’m going to continue with that this week and aim for another loss next Tuesday.  I did have one not so great night {last night} when I gave in and had some Chex Mix with Mr. Chaotic.  I swear he wants me to fail because he always makes sure it’s right near me.  Ultimately though, it is my decision to eat it so it’s entirely my fault for doing so. =(

Okay, onto my February goal weigh-ins:

12/18/12 Weigh-In (WI): 173
01/08/13 WI: 171.5 (-1.5)

01/15/13 GW: 170 WI: 173 (+1.5)
01/22/13 GW: 168.5 WI: 174.5 (+1.5)
01/29/13 GW: 167 WI: 172.5 (-2!!)
02/05/13 GW: 171
02/12/13 GW: 169.5
02/19/13 GW: 168
02/26/13 GW: 166.5

Wish me luck!  Also, I would love for you to leave your blog link in the comments so I can come check out your progress and find some motivation!

Organizing Revolution–Week 4: Living Room/Playroom

We actually have a separate living room and play room, but for this task, I am focusing solely on the living room.  We do keep some toys in there as well to keep the baby occupied.

I don’t know about you, but cleaning is not something that I enjoy.  To be honest, I think it kind of sucks!  Most times, I just let everything accumulate until I can’t take it anymore.  And the dust.  Seriously….so.much.dust.  I swear if I were up for it I would have to dust every.single.day just to keep up with it.  But I’m not up for it and I don’t dust everyday.

My kids are six, three-and-a-half, and fifteen-months.  Since day one, I’ve always been the one to clean up after them.  Sometimes the two older ones volunteer to help me with dusting and picking up.  When they do, I’ve always been ungrateful because it wasn’t done the way I want it done so I’ve always thought it’s just easier to do it myself.  Which, in turn, has made me so overwhelmed.  I’ve never actually taken the time to teach them how to pick up/clean up after themselves.  I guess I just thought they should already know that.  We’ve tried instituting rules but we aren’t very consistent and the kids know that.  It is something we have started working on as I don’t want my kids to grow up feeling entitled.  Entitled to not have to do anything for themselves ever.  It drives me crazy!  I was never raised like that and I definitely don’t want my kids to be either.

Anyways, onto my living room.  The before pictures actually aren’t horribly cluttered, but it still was driving me crazy.  Maybe it was all the dust!  School was not in session on Monday for Martin Luther King Day so my oldest was surprisingly very willing to help me clean.  We worked on both the bathroom and the living room area.  Here is the before:

I should have taken a close-up of the dust, but completely spaced it.  Here is the after:

The pictures were taken Monday and every evening since, it’s looked very similar.  We’ve all been making an effort to pick up the clutter and put it where it belongs.  Well, all of us except Mr. Chaotic.  That’s a whole ‘nother story though.

How did you do this week with the organizing revolution?  Leave me a link to your blog so I can check out your organized space!  Don’t forget to head on over to vote for me!

Tuesday Weigh-In

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Ugh, I feel like a complete failure this week.  =(  I keep telling myself and reminding myself how great I feel when I am making healthy choices but then something comes over me and I lose all willpower and go in for the J-U-N-K!  I am literally my own worst enemy!  I know what I need to do and I am just plain and simple not doing it.  I just don’t seem to have the same drive and determination to not eat the junk food as I did almost three years ago. 

12/18/12 Weigh-In (WI):  173
01/08/13 WI:  171.5 (-1.5)

01/15/13  GW:  170  WI:  173 (+1.5)
01/22/13  GW:  168.5  WI: 174.5 (+1.5)
01/29/13  GW:  167

Yikes!  The scale is moving the wrong direction once again.  I am going to try my damnedest to get on the treadmill again this week.  My oldest daughter and I did a 10-minute cardio workout tonight from an app on our Kindle and all I can say is I’m way out of shape.  I about keeled over after those 10 minutes were up.  Maybe that’s what I need to do – three 10-minute workouts vs. one 30-minute or so workout.  Hmmm….maybe I should print the two quotes in this post and hang them on my fridge and cupboards so I see them as I’m reaching for the junk food.

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I hope you are having a better week than I am!  Where do you find the willpower to resist the sugary junk food? 

Organizing Revolution Week 3–Closet

This task couldn’t have come at a better time for me.  As I said back in week 1, my oldest daughter decided to move to the guest/storage room in the basement.  Mind you, we’ve been using that room for storage since we moved in almost eight years ago.  Let’s just say that a lot of it is being held onto for no reason.  I don’t know, maybe there’s a bit of an emotional attachment to the ginormous box of miscellaneous stuff from my hubby over the years.  There were books – some had been read, some hadn’t;  I even found some old college textbooks.  Oy vey!

So anyways, this week wasn’t as successful for me as far as actually completing this project.  But, my motto is progress, not perfection.  With that, I did make a lot of progress in the storage closet.  She has basically half of the closet that’s usable for her and the other half that still has to be organized and purged by me. 

As you can see in the top left “before” picture, there is a lot of miscellaneous stuff being stored in this closet.  There’s still one shelf you can’t see at the top of the closet, but I didn’t make it that far this go around, so I won’t share that one.  I was able to get half of each closet shelf cleaned off so that my daughter is able to put her pajamas, jeans, shorts, etc. on them.  As I have more time, I obviously still have a lot of work to get done in there, I plan on working on the closet over the next few months.  Okay fine, it will probably take me the entire next year.  Ha!

I’m linking this post up to Week 3 at the New Year’s Organizing Revolution!

Have you joined the Organizing Revolution?  If not, click on over to check it out.  If you have joined, leave me a comment so I can come check out your space!

Don’t forget to stop by and vote for me!!

Tuesday Weigh-In

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After my weigh-in last Tuesday, I was on fire!  I actually looked forward to my time on the treadmill and I did a great job of tracking my food for the week, if I do say so myself.  Then, the weekend hit, my girls suckered their dad into getting them each a bag of candy, and I thought I did pretty good, considering the sugar monster that lives within me.  I will admit that I did have a few chewy sweettarts and a couple gummy worms, though they made me feel sick to my stomach.  I would have thought after feeling like that and knowing that I didn’t need that extra sugar, it would have been enough to just have had that taste.  I’m not going to lie.  It wasn’t.  By the end of the weekend, I had basically eaten the whole bag of those dang chewy sweettarts.  I also found myself munching on late night Doritos or Chex Mix with hubby.  The worst part – I didn’t track any of it!

Ugh!!!  Why do I sabotage myself?  I was on the right trail  for a change and then I just belly-flop right off the wagon.  For what?  For the measly few seconds of satisfaction that the junk food provides.  Gross.  When am I going to learn?  I need to stop feeding the sugar/snack monster.  This week’s weigh-in definitely was affected by my sabotage.  Let’s check out the damage, shall we?

12/18/12 Weigh-In (WI):  173
01/08/13 WI:  171.5 (-1.5)

01/15/13  GW:  170  WI:  173 (+1.5)
01/22/13  GW:  168.5
01/29/13  GW:  167

The scale moved the wrong way!  So frustrating!  But I know why and I just need to figure out how I can stop sabotaging myself.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated! =)

How did you do this week?  Join me in keeping yourself accountable by leaving your stats in my comments.  I also link my weigh-in up to Tammy’s Tuesday Weigh-In over at Skinny Mom’s Kitchen so be sure to check out her page!

Organizing Revolution Week 2: Kitchen

Ah, the kitchen.  We meet again.  Ha.  My kitchen and I have always had a love/hate relationship.  You see, my house is a mere 764 square feet upstairs so the kitchen is teeny-tiny.  Even though I complain all the time how little it is, I really honestly don’t mind.  The thing is, there’s really only enough room for one person to be using the kitchen at a time (which I LOVE).  That being said, with five of us in the family (not including the dogs), there’s always more than one person in the kitchen (which can be quite irksome at times).  Oh, and the most annoying thing about my kitchen – it’s always cluttered!!

Whether it’s papers or miscellaneous whatever, there’s always something on my countertops and there’s literally no vacancies inside the cabinets.  Let’s just say the cabinet space is limited (even more so since I gave up an entire large cabinet and drawer so my husband could install a dishwasher for me – I am definitely not complaining about losing that cabinet & drawer considering how much I love my dishwasher!).  Limited cabinet space equals even more limited countertop space.  Case-in-point – what you see here is the only countertop space that I have.  Told you it was little.

Oh, and speaking of clutter, check out the top of my refrigerator.  I swear there is no help for me!  Somehow, junk always manages to find its way to the top of my fridge.  Mostly it’s to keep stuff away from the kids, but it’s also kind of just a quick stow-away spot.

Onto my oven.  In the almost 8 years that we’ve lived here, I think my oven has been cleaned once (and that was with the super stinky self-cleaning mode).  So embarrassing!  I found a recipe for an easy homemade oven cleaner and thought I’d put that to the test.  Around 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening, as the kids were eating their bedtime snack, I found the ammonia and went to work. 

Then, this morning after walking my kindergartener to school (in our brisk 16 degree weather), I came home and got to work scrubbing the oven.  I’m not quite sure how long it took, but I do know that it required plenty of scrubbing.  My 3-year old even thought she had to help.  I wasn’t too excited about that since we were breathing in the ammonia fumes as we worked, but she insisted.  After scrubbing with the diluted ammonia/dish soap solution, my oven still needed some extra scrubbing as there were still charred spots on the oven.  So, we liberally sprinkled baking soda over the entire bottom of the oven.  I then used the ammonia/soap solution to make a paste and scrubbed some more.  When we were done with that, I took a dry rag and wiped it out, only to find that it looked chalky.  We found our vinegar/water spray bottle and sprayed that all over the oven.  After wiping the vinegar away, look at how incredibly spic and span my oven looks!!  Amazing I tell you.  Simply ah-mazing!

Not completely charbroiled-spot free, but I’m very happy with the results.  I’m sure if I had the time and patience, I could have a spotless oven, but these few teeny-tiny spots look much better than the big black charred spots that were there just 24 hours ago.

There you have it.  I have linked this post to Week 2 of the Organizing Revolution.  I did not know this last week, but you can pop on over to Clean Mama’s Organizing Revolution Week 2 and vote for me!  Voting starts Friday! 

Have you joined the Organizing Revolution?  If not, click on over to check it out.  If you have joined, leave me a comment so I can come check out your space!

Tuesday Weigh-In

I need to start holding myself accountable for my actions again.  If I don’t, I’m afraid I might find myself right back where I started almost 3 years ago – very overweight and very unhappy with myself.  So here we go again…the weekly weigh-ins.  I follow a blog called Skinny Mom’s Kitchen and she also has been struggling to lose those unwanted pounds and has decided to have a Tuesday Weigh-In to keep her accountable.  She has also asked for her readers to join her…so I did just that.  Since I am posting it there, I might as well make it a point to post it here as well.

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Oy vey.  Looking through my Spark Summary Calendar, looks like the last time I weighed myself and recorded it was December 18, 2012.  I stepped on the scale last week Wednesday, but didn’t record it.  I stepped on the scale this morning and it said 171.5, so that’s a pound and a half gone! 

02/14/10 Starting Weight (SW):  199
05/26/13 Goal Weight (GW): 152

12/18/12 Weigh-In (WI):  173
01/08/13 WI:  171.5 (-1.5)

01/15/13  GW:  170  WI:
01/22/13  GW:  168.5
01/29/13  GW:  167

How did I choose that goal weight you ask?  Well, it’s the weight I was before I had my third baby.  When I get there, I’ll reevaluate, but for now my goal is just to get to pre-preggo weight.

What exactly is my plan of attack?  As Tammy says over at Skinny Mom’s Kitchen, “I need to return back to the basics.”  For me, that means:

1. Tracking my food intake…every.single.morsel.
2. Moving my body
3. Hydrating my body
4. Weekly weigh-ins
5. Everything in Moderation

Want to keep yourself accountable with me?  Leave a comment with your starting weight, goal weight, and current weight.

Organizing Revolution: Week 1 DONE!

Office/Desk
Technically we don’t have an office anymore as we gave that room up for our first baby six years ago.  We do, however, have “office supplies” scattered everywhere throughout the house and our desk tucked away in the basement. 
For this week’s project, I’m working solely on organizing our desk.  Being in the basement, I guess we thought out of sight, out of mind…right?  WRONG!  I am so happy I found this Organizing Revolution to help get me off the chaos train because that oversized desk always has mountains of junk on it.  The sad thing is we hardly ever really use the desk.  Occasionally one of the girls will use the computer, though more often they use the desk to make scribbles notes for everyone and anyone. 
I honestly didn’t know if I was going to get this week’s task accomplished beings that the week is half over already, school just started back up today, and Mr. Chaos had to go back to work as well.   I found myself wanting to go organize my desk instead of spending the kids’ naptime checking email and Pinterest.  Drumroll, please…

Look you can see most of the wood top!  I should be feeling on top of the world because this is a HUGE accomplishment for me.  But I’m not.  I’m feeling like I should have done more because off to the right of this picture is our file cabinet, which holds the printer.  I didn’t get a picture of it, however, I want to come clean.  The stack of papers on there were from the bills that had been paid all the way back to April!!  I don’t know why I keep the invoice thingy that doesn’t get sent back with bill when it just ends up in a heap.  For real.  So now I have a very large stack of papers next to the trash/shredder so that I can work on shredding papers over the next few days.  I don’t know how much shredding my shredder can handle at one time.  I’m also going to take a proactive approach and just start shredding things weekly, or at least 2-3 times a month!
I then made time to organize the “phone book nook” area of our kitchen while dinner was cooking.  When we moved in to our home, there was this little built in that we’ve used to store some office-type supplies in.  Stamps, scratch paper, pens, and anything else that happened to land there.  Drumroll, please…

Notice the little black desk organizer in the after picture?  I stole it from the desk to use in the phone book nook.  The round spinny one just wasn’t working for me.  I’m not sure if I like the desk organizer either.  To me, it seems more cluttered.
So yeah.  This is my organizing revolution for week 1.  What do you think so far?  I’m beyond excited to see what this month brings for me organization-wise.  While I had my camera out today, I went around the basement snapping more pictures of things that need to be organized.  My oldest daughter has decided to move to the basement bedroom so I have to work on clearing out that room and closet.  It’s our guest room, but it’s also our quick stow-it there until we need to use the room for guests again.
Did you join the Organization Revolution?  If so, how did you do this week?

Welcome…and Happy New Year!!

Hi there!  I’m Stacy.  Welcome to my cozy corner of the world wide web.  Just wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that 2013 is an amazing year for all of us.  2013!!  Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks that the past year has whizzed by.  I’ve been meaning to and meaning to get started with this blog for the past month, however, December turned out to be a very busy month and of course I didn’t get very far with it.  So, stick with me as I make a few changes & updates as the year progresses.
As you can tell from my blog name, my world is pretty chaotic.  My family of five, plus two small dogs, has outgrown our humble little abode and we have no plans on moving anytime in the near future.  With our first daughter in kindergarten and a husband that has a love for dawdling shopping, we rarely make time to get things done around the house since it seems we are always going.  Toys and clutter are taking over the place.  My cleaning and to-do lists are never-ending. I seem to run out of time before the day is over so it seems nothing ever gets done.  I’m hoping that by me blogging to the public about my progress (or lack thereof), that will be the motivation I need to get myself, my family, and my home more organized.  I’ve always just gone through life getting by with no real motivation to do much, doing things “good enough” to make the house presentable.  Good enough is driving me crazy and I want to work towards change.
I’m also going to use this space as a place to document my life, whether it’s what I happened to eat that day, or if I actually got my butt moving on the treadmill, something fun or funny that happened, or maybe even just a picture of the kiddos.
I’m going to start this new year off on the right foot.  I have stumbled upon an organizing challenge being hosted by seven organizing bloggers in blogland.

There’s no better way to get control of the chaos than for me to join this challenge.  I am in!  I’ll be sharing photos later this week and I can’t wait to show you the progress.  Click on the button to check out the challenge.  I’d love it for you to join me, maybe cheer me on, as I organize this chaotic mess that I call life.
Cheers to the New Year!