Where the Time Is Spent...

Today's Small Thing was a HUGE project for me. We were to sit down and fill in a horizontal schedule with how we use our time each week, to be able to see where we have blocks of time that we can use. My weekly schedule is such a huge issue for me because of my sleep schedule. I am never quite sure how to arrange my time, especially since I work part of every single day (either the morning of that day - or the night of that day) with the exception of two days each month.

But I did it. I have my schedule in an Excel document. It isn't pretty and I realized that although I start work five nights a week, I actually work six mornings one week and four mornings the next week. I'm not sure that is actually something that I am all that thankful for figuring out. Oh well.

It's done and I think that I need to really evaluate my schedule with my Hubby's assistance as well to really figure out how to best accommodate my need for sleep with our family's need for me to be awake. Most of my fun activities like watching DVR'ed shows and such, is done in the middle of the night on one of my nights off or on an evening that I don't work after the kids go to bed. It's really hit and miss with my fun activities. The kids aren't really involved in any weekly activities apart from Wednesday night church group and Hubby takes them to that and drops them off.

After much tweaking to the schedule, I think I have it all figured out now. Phew!  And it only took me half an hour to figure out the whole sleep portion of my schedule. At least it's figured out though!

This is what it looks like:

If you want to, you can click on each "picture" to enlarge it, but only if you REALLY REALLY want to, it isn't all that entertaining but it's there. And it was worth quite a few points as well.

Total for today: 70 points
Total for January: 480 points

Tossed It Tuesday

If you read my Tackle It Tuesday post, you would have read some of the things that I tossed today. But here it is again, with some of the other items I have tossed this past week (either donated, thrown away or given away):

• trash that was stashed in a dead zone in our bedroom (now usable - and utilized - storage space)
• outgrown clothing from our children (found in former bedroom dead zone)
• outgrown shoes from our children (found in former bedroom dead zone)
• boxes, boxes, boxes (some were from my work that I had brought home for my mom to use as she was moving and had either not made it to her yet or had been utilized by Hubby)
• fridge items (I will spare you the exact details, but yeah, some of it wasn't pretty)

I think that is pretty much it. That dead zone today was quite the job, but it's much nicer now. In the end, I think there was one small tote of toys that was kept from the area. And the space is about five feet long, two and a half feet tall and three feet deep? Something like that anyhow. And mostly filled with junk and trash. So nice knowing that all of that is gone! Woo! Thanks again to Violet for the inspiration! (You can click on the picture to visit her and join in on the purge!)

Tackle It Tuesday

This week my tackle was going to be the area under the stairs where we store our Christmas tree and related items so that I could get it all put away, but then life happened, it snowed, my commute was twice then three times the amount that it usually is, I got snowed in at work for a bit until the highways were somewhat passable... So the project under the stairs still has not gotten done. However, I did clear out an area in our bedroom that had given way to chaos. It's an odd-shaped. There is a wall that houses pipes and vents and such, I believe. Not really sure because it's blocked from the bottom. But there is an area underneath it where there is some storage space available. So, I pulled everything out from that area, put our Christmas totes in there (4 of them to be exact - still need to locate the lid for one of them though), put our desktop computer back in that area in the front of it, until it goes out to it's new home, on a desk that will be in the den once the desk gets moved back into the house from our garage. Ahem. One step at a time, please. Same thing with our television that we did have in our room. It is stored in the front of a tote as well - one of our file totes, where we store important papers. The television will go out to the den as well, once we get another piece of furniture in there to put it on. I also found some of the kids' smaller toys that all fit into a small tote, which I sent up with the kids to be put into their rooms. I also threw out some toys that I didn't want around anymore. Ones that were broken, had missing pieces, or just hadn't been played with. I also came across some storage shelves and put them next to the chair that Hubby put back into our room. I cleared off the shelves and have them ready to go for storage items. Not sure what I want to store on them, but they are ready to go. Our room is now probably about 20% neat and organized. It will be more, but I'm taking it a bit at a time, as I am able to get it done. Hope to continue working on it this week as well.