{ organize ME }

Aaahh...Fall. Love everything about it.

The change of seasons is always a good time to take stock of what is working and what isn't working in your life, to clean out the fridge and toss the junk, to recommit to fitting in a form of fitness everyday, to touch base with yourself & your partner about where you are at.

Will and I had a long conversation the other night about being realistic, about making up our own rules/systems of creating our fun life, about being creative in the ways we'd like to approach our family life so that we can maximize our time together with the kids while still tending to our passions and our businesses. The point is to clear out a lot of the unnecessary stuff so we can find better ways of being together...because our relationship is either moving forward or not. So, lets move it forward. When things get crazy, instead of just going 'ARGH,' we sit down and say "We're going to find a way to do this (or get out of doing this)." We also planned a few date nights...

Part of all of this is that I've discovered that I'm at my best when I engage everything - the mind, the spirit and my body. So I try really hard to schedule "ME-time" throughout the week to encourage sanity.

I encourage you to take some time this week or over the weekend, as a family, to set some intentions for the upcoming school year - figure out just how we want this school year to look and feel. And if there is something that isn't working, sit down together and figure it out.

So, here are some things we are incorporating into our fall family schedule.

1. Schedule in family time - family dinners (we aim for nightly while the kids are young), family movie nights (Friday night), special breakfast (Saturday mornings), Church (Sunday mornings), etc.
2. Schedule in daily ME-time. This is key for all of you moms! After you get the kids off to school, do you have 1/2 hour before heading into the office to have a cup of coffee or go to a yoga class? Do you have an hour in the morning before the kids are awake to go for a run?
3. Schedule in a weekly family volunteer project or outing (Thursday afternoons for us).
4. Leave a few afternoons open with no activities where kids can just be kids and relax at home or play. (Monday, Tuesday & Friday's).
5. Limit the afterschool mayhem. We typically only allow Sam to be involved with one activity/sport outside of family things a week and have one playdate a week (eg. she can choose from art class, soccer, gymnastics, swim team, etc.) She can pick whatever one she wants, but just one. (Wednesdays she has gymnastics and Tuesdays is generally open for a playdate afterschool). We've found that anything more than that just tires her out and makes life crazy. Simple is better.

What are some of the ways you are getting into your fall routines?

image via here.

{ organize ME - family fun }

I've written about this before....how I try to plan a fun family activity, lesson or outing once a day and schedule into my momme planner....sometimes this is as simple as a craft project after school, sometimes its an outing to the rec center and sometimes its something that requires a bit more planning, like a family olympics. We also just reinstated our family rule of no TV or computer games during the school week. So after school it has helped having something planned for in advance so Samme doesn't ask to watch a movie or play a computer game because she's "bored." {I'll post more about the no TV rule soon.} Anyway, I gather up all of the goodies on Friday and put them all in a bin on the table so we are ready to go each day.


This delightful site that I posted about last week inspired me to plan some of this family fun around a weekly {theme}. I like this idea and think it will help me plan our weeks a bit better.
For any given theme you can have the kids do crafts, read books, cook food, enjoy imaginary play, listen to and play music, sing songs, make art, go on field trips and all sorts of other activities that help them absorb and enjoy the information about the weekly theme.

So this weekend we started the {Snow} theme. Here are some ideas for building some family fun into the week around the theme of {Snow} - build a snowman, make felt snowman, create marshmallow snowman, make snowman pancakes for breakfast, make glitter snowflakes to hang from the window, read books about snow, etc.

Next week we are starting the {Love} theme and on the weekend we'll make valentines cards for classmates, valentines bracelets for grandmas, afterschool we'll make glitter hearts, have heart shaped snacks, decorate the windows with hearts, make a heart mobile, make heart pancakes for breakfast, read love books from library, learn about the heart, spread some love, etc.

The following week or two will be an {Olympics} theme to coincide with the start of the winter Olympics - we'll have a family olympics (sledding competition, go skiing together, snowshoeing, swimming, etc.), make olympic ceremonial torches and paint olympic flags, mark on a map where the different countries are, watch olympics competitions together at night, etc.

{ closet...before & after }

Let's focus on the AFTER first, shall we?





How? Well, I spent about $200 on bins, boxes, more shelves, wood hangers, etc. I purged and organized. I donated a ton of stuff to the local women's shelter and thrift store. I sold a few handbags and dresses on ebay. But a 100x better isn't it? {I actually bought 120 wood hangers (and that's all - everything else had to go).}

Here's is the BEFORE. Which granted was not as bad as this darling bloggers, closet.

{My closet BEFORE}

{ organized home }

Doesn't this look like a fun, organized & stylish house? I love the rustic/modern mix in each of the rooms. More of their home tour on Cookie's Nesting Blog here.

{ getting rid of clutter }

Here is a great tip on a way to reduce clutter in your house by focusing on one room per week. This is sort of the approach I take. For example, I'll bring a box & a garbage bag into Sam's room and clean out any junk or damaged items into the trash (things that can't be repaired or recycled) and put things to donate to Goodwill into the box). I do this once a month with various rooms in our house. I just did this with the kitchen (amazing how many things you can accumulate in a kitchen that you never use). I had 3 teapots! Grab a box & go - it's amazing how much "lighter" you feel when you get rid of things you don't need or want anymore!

Great chalkboard storage jars here.

{ get more done @ 5pm }

Here are some great tips from Well MOM on how to use your time more efficiently after 5pm to get stuff done + have time to take care yourself + spend quality time with your family each evening. And yes, it does mean turning OFF the TV. And remembering to stop and Breathe. Oh, and Well Mom just wrote about LobotoME.

Here are some great health & nutrition tips for busy moms from Gabby.

And here are some more tips from, who would have guessed, CNN. They have a whole section of their website dedicated to {busy moms}.

{ get containers ::: get organized }

Here are a few of the ways we keep things organized here at our house.

Sam's toys & art table in playroom

entry way stuff (shoes, keys, cell phones, sunglasses, sunscreen, etc.)

Sam's art supplies in playroom

nature souvenirs from trips we've taken

{ BE organized }

Pantry photo via Flickr.

It's funny - so many of you think that I (and my house) are super organized because of my business. While, I do find that I am pretty organized (and I do enjoy organizing projects), you clearly haven't seen my kitchen junk drawers (count: 3), my closets or my garage.

It can certainly feel overwhelming to start a project. Here are some tips on where to start with home organization projects. And here are some tips on creating a home organization binder to keep all of your household paperwork organized.

This past week we worked on our garage - a place to store things but it has never held an actual vehicle. It has 6 bikes; a raft; kayaks; business supplies; a table saw; a wagon; a sandbox we still haven't put together; 14 gardening pots; etc. but no car. It still has a long way to go before a car will ever fit in there but we took a huge truckload of items to the Salvation Army; took another load of recycling to the recycling center; 2 huge garbage bags of trash; and listed one bike and old scuba gear on craigslist. It feels so good to get rid of stuff we no longer need/use. Here are some tips on how to go about decluttering from Simple Mom {I am loving her blog right now.}

What's your biggest organizational project on your to do list?

Oh and some people have been asking me what I do with my weekly momME planner? Do I leave it on my desk, do I bring it with ME, etc.? I either tuck it into my wallet - if I don't have loads of other paperwork to cart around with ME (see pic below) or I put it on a clipboard with other paperwork and put it in my bag. Sometimes, if I have just one or 2 errands and then am coming right home, it stays on my desk, but I'd say the majority of the time it is with ME. I do know people who have whole-punched them and put them in a cute binder too. Next year's new product will most likely be a smaller, spiral bound organizeME planner with the mantra poster as the cover - a more portable version.

{ the HUB }

The hub of our house (and many of yours I'm sure) is the kitchen. That's where we are a lot of the time...I had a whole messy drawer with arts & craft supplies for Sam so that she can create while I am making dinner or cleaning up the kitchen. But it was a mess and hard for her to find things, plus, truth be told, I really wanted that extra drawer for aprons and cloth napkins. So I put her art stuff in this caddy - it's cute enough that it just remains on the counter when not in use.