This was not in the plan.

Saturday did not go as planned for this family!

My normal Saturday routine is to get up at 5am and head over to our pickup location for our Bountiful Baskets, a produce co-op we participate in more on this later, volunteer my time packing baskets, get my own basket and head home. Then I put it away once home, and lay on the sofa and rest for an hour or so until the children wake up. Once they wake it's breakfast, a trip to the grocery store to get our necessities, lunch, a nap for Twiggles, playtime for me and the big boys, some outside play after nap, and then dinner.

This week however was not what I had planned! I got up at my usual 5am, drove over to bountiful baskets did my volunteer time, and loaded my basket into the car. This was more exhausting than usual since I'd been sick the three days prior. As I was pulling into our parking lot I heard a rather strange noise, and upon parking and looking about I discovered that the car had a flat tire, and my donut is without air. This means no car until Hubby's day off so he can get a new tire from the tire place. This also meant that I had no way to the grocery store to get some of our necessities, this week including the ingredients for our Sunday dinner. Oh, and my power box was flashing which mean that I had very little electricity left for the house, in this case I had only $1.36 remaining until the power would shut off, so getting power on the card was a priority!

Thankfully I did manage to get a neighbor to take me for power and some groceries, I did not get all the groceries I intended because the power kiosk is inside one of our more expensive stores so I settled for getting the Must Have Now groceries like milk, eggs, bread, and the food for Sunday. I was sad to have missed Sunday service, but without a car it is just not possible.

Oh, and of course on Sunday as I was trying to check my email, I discovered that the laptop battery was dead, and the charger was not working. Of course my warranty expired 3 days before which meant I was on my own with this one. Sunday being Easter I found Best Buy to be closed, and the only charger I was able to find was in a local Radio Shack at a price far higher than I would have paid to best buy, but since everything is on my laptop I had to get it, or the children would have no school schedules, and be missing many of their worksheets.

I have been telling hubby since the first time our computer malfunctioned and needed repair that I would like to get rid of it, and get a different one, now he too wants a different one, of a different brand as we find the customer service for this one to be severely lacking, and the computer seems to have a great many issues.

So all in all we had a good Sunday together as a family but the rest of the weekend just did not go as it was supposed to. I am looking forward to a better week this week.

March is gone

and so is some more clutter! I succeeded in removing over 31 items from my home this past month. I am enjoying the new found space that I am getting by clearing out the old. Some items are finding their way to closets and storage areas, but many items are getting tossed out or donated. I realize that some of the items on my list for March have also appeared on previous lists, however, this is because I have been finding items that were not put away previously and therefore needed to be gone through after I thought I finished an area, also it is due to the fact that my baby especially grows like a weed and so I'm getting rid of this clothes almost weekly.

March Decluttering list:
1. Big kid toys (this was a HUGE trash bag full)
2. A cabinet previously used for storing baby toys (his toys are now in the room with the big kids stuff)
3. A Toy organizer with book rack on top
4. Another Bag of Baby toys (he almost never plays with baby toys anymore, he prefers matchbox cars)
5. My own clothes that don't fit or haven't been worn in a long time
6. some old towels that we don't need
7. Last year's school books (I was saving them for the baby, but he's so far behind the big kids that I'll likely change my mind by then)
8. Young early readers that the big boys don't use anymore
9. The smaller rat cage that once held two rats, but now we have a larger cage because we have more rats
10. plastic kid dishes
11. plastic baby spoons and forks
12. 2 pairs of outgrown baby shoes
13. a shopping bag of dvd's that we don't watch
14. baby clothes - a shopping bag full
15. a book shelf that just doesn't fit our space well - it has rounded corners and only one side is solid it's just odd
16. a magazine holder that only serves to fill up with junk
17. pool floaties that aren't needed because the big kids can swim and the baby has a floatie suit
18. pool toys that never get used
19. cookbooks - I had a serious cookbook addiction, but now I just use the internet so out go the cookbooks, though I kept a few important ones :)
20 - plastic food storage containers - we seriously had enough for three families....
21. small plastic cups

OK so that's the list. 31+ items out of our space. The sad thing is that even after doing this for 3 full months our home is still full to bursting! I really, really hope that by the end of the year it at least looks like I made a dent in our clutter :(