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I can’t do it all.  As much as I want to, I just don’t have the time.

With that being said, I’m putting this blog on hold….sort of.  Being Frugal.net is growing at such a rapid pace that it’s monopolizing my blogging time.  Not that I’m complaining.  I’m having a great deal of fun running that blog.  But I can’t devote the same amount of attention here.

I’m also knee deep in my declutter project, and that’s going to be taking up a lot of time for the foreseeable future, too.  I do want to keep a written record of my declutter project, though, because I never want to be tempted to have too much clutter in my house again.

So this blog is going to become my journal for my home declutter project.  You’re welcome to pop in to see how it’s coming along, and I promise to post lots of before and after pictures.  I’m just not sure at this point how regularly I’ll be updating.

So to all of my friends and wonderful readers, thank you for hanging in there with me.  And again, if you want to stick around for my house project updates, I’d love to hear from you.  I’m not taking any of your feeds out of my reader, so I’ll still be around.  And of course, you can still find me over at Being Frugal.net every day!

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As I’m sitting here watching reruns of 7th Heaven on the Hallmark Channel, I’m wondering what happened to family friendly shows such as this one, Little House on the Prairie, and Life Goes On.

I remember that Monday nights were a huge deal in my family growing up. It was the night we all sat down together to watch Little House. The stories were compelling, and the lessons to be learned were practical.

7th Heaven was much the same in the early years. (It got a little soap opera-esque in the later years) My husband and I watched from the beginning, before we had any children. We had a standing Monday night date. We didn’t have a lot of money for junk food, so I’d make a bowl of pudding every Monday, and we’d watch 7th Heaven while eating pudding.

And Life Goes On. You just had to love Corky. I loved the way that show taught the world about people with Down Syndrome. An everyday family living life. There was nothing outrageous about the family. They just dealt with real life situations every week.

Are there any shows out there these days that a family with young children can watch together? I’m certainly not going to let my children watch Desperate Housewives. We like American Idol, but even then I have to preview the guest artists to make sure they’re not singing anything raunchy. I learned that the hard way when they had a couple of singers (I don’t even know who they are) singing “Hips Don’t Lie”. Yeah, the song is about exactly what it sounds like.

Call me sentimental. Call me uptight about my standards. I just miss the old days of good television.

Photo by aussiegall.

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Be sure to head over to Weekend Kindness to say hello!  There’s lots of good stuff over there, so stick around a while to check out the site.

Oh, you want to know what I posted about?  Spending time with your children!

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Apparently Liz and Sam have been watching our declutter process.  Yesterday we asked them both the clean their rooms, and they both set aside a lot of toys to give away.  I’m so proud of them!

Now I just have to get the homeless toys out of my living room!

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Last week I told you about my declutter project.  I can’t say I’ve gotten a whole lot more done in the bedroom, but I’ve begun to clean up the stuff I moved out of my bedroom.

One of my biggest issues was my collection of books.  I had way too many books on a cheap bookshelf that I got from Walmart several years back.  That cheap bookshelf broke a couple of years ago, but we kept piling on the books.

After getting rid of 3/4 of my books, I decided to put the remaining books in my living room, so I’d have a reading area.  I stopped by Target on Thursday, and they had the exact type of bookshelves I was looking for on sale!  I bought two and rearranged my books and photo albums.  Here’s the finished product.

Much neater, don’t you think?  Ignore the clutter off to the side.  I’m in the process of going through that and finding a new home for it.  Eventually I want to put a comfortable chair and a lamp where the clutter is, so I have a nice reading area.

I also need to continue to work with the new shelves.  It turns out our floor is really uneven in the space where I put the shelves, so they’re not lining up exactly right.  Right now it’s pretty close, but not perfect.

I’ll continue to post updates.  So far I have to tell you, I’m loving the changes we’ve made!

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I recently read Healing Stones by Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn.  I loved it so much that I gave it a full review, and I’m giving away a copy of the book here.  So head on over to Lynnae’s Bookshelf to enter the giveaway!

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I apologize for sorely neglecting this blog. Life has been unbelievably busy lately, and I haven’t been able to keep up. And my blogging schedule isn’t working out too well for me, so I think I’m going to go back to random posting.

Since I haven’t been posting, I thought I’d show you what I did yesterday. After being inspired by Oprah’s show with Peter Walsh last week, I picked up a copy of Peter’s book It’s All Too Much. Talk about inspiring. I can’t stop reading. And then yesterday I took action.

One of my goals for this year was to rid my house of everything but what was useful and what I loved. Peter’s book provides a road map for getting that done. I’m one who has an easy time coming up with goals and ideas, but a hard time translating ideas into action. That’s what the book does, so it’s perfect for me.

Yesterday I began the process of tackling my bedroom. My bedroom has always been a mess. It’s not because I’m messy, but we live in a three bedroom house, with a total of 5 closets. We have no garage or any type of outdoor storage, so everything needs to fit in the 5 closets. My bedroom started to become the catch-all room for anything that didn’t fit anywhere else. We just had way too much stuff in there.

Peter says, “No way!” He stresses that the master bedroom should be for sleeping, romance, and getting dressed. That’s it. If it doesn’t have to do with sleeping, clothing, or romantic ambiance, it shouldn’t be in the room. I did my best, but I made a couple of modifications. The TV stayed, as well as my husband’s guitars and amp.

I moved the books, the crafts, the mailing supplies, the gift wrap, and much other miscellaneous junk OUT. Are you ready for the pictures?

The before pictures were actually taken about a year ago. But the amount of clutter was the same then as it was yesterday morning.

Before

After

Stuff to go to Goodwill (mostly books)

And for good measure, the other thing I did over the last few days was accompany Liz to get her ears pierced. That’s what she wanted for her 10th birthday, so that’s what we did. Here’s her new earrings. She’s so excited about them.

So now that you all know how busy I’ve been, hopefully you’ll forgive me for not being around much.

Photo by sh0dan.

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I saw this over at Kandy’s Place, and I just had to see if my name even existed in the database of names. Surprisingly, my name not only existed, but the description of me is pretty accurate….especially the perfectionist and type A parts.

What Lynnae Means

You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow. You are light hearted and accepting. You don’t get worked up easily. Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is.You are a free spirit, and you resent anyone who tries to fence you in. You are unpredictable, adventurous, and always a little surprising. You may miss out by not settling down, but you’re too busy having fun to care. You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people. You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts. You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals. You are usually the best at everything … you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic “Type A” personality. You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone. You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together. At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together.

What’s Your Name’s Hidden Meaning?

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At least it’s not another post about water, right? It’s hard to write about health when I’ve been sick since Tuesday night. I actually managed to get up early and workout on Monday and Tuesday morning. My plan was to workout every weekday morning for 4 weeks, so it became a habit. I guess I’ll have to start over next week.

But back to the topic at hand. I tend to get really negative when I’m sick, so I thought I’d look at the benefits to what I see as the worst kind of plague to hit mankind…the stomach flu. I would seriously rather be sick for a week with the real flu than to suffer 24 hours of a stomach bug, but the stomach bug is what hit me. So what’s so good about the stomach flu?

It cured my coffee addiction. I haven’t had a cup since Tuesday morning, and the thought of coffee makes me cringe right now. I was hoping to give up the caffeine at some point, and what better time than now? I’m already past the caffeine withdrawal headache, too. I think it coincided with my dehydration headache.

I caught up on my sleep. I had been going to bed way too late and getting up way too early. After being up sick all night on Tuesday, I’ve slept the better part of the last two days. Wednesday I slept for two hours in the morning while the kids were at school, and then slept another three after my husband got home from work. And yesterday after dropping my daughter off at school, my son and I came home. He sat on my bed and watched a nice, long DVD, while I snoozed right beside him. After another long nap yesterday afternoon, I was pretty much back to my normal self.

I lost 6.5 pounds. Yeah, I was pretty shocked too. I’m sure it was mostly water weight, and I wouldn’t recommend the stomach flu as a way to lost weight. But if I have to have the stomach flu, I’ll take the weight loss. Now to get back on track with the workouts, so I don’t gain it all right back.

So that’s my not-so-healthy post of the week. If only the stomach flu miraculously caused my house to sparkle, I’d be one happy camper. Unfortunately it seems to work the opposite, though. When mommy gets sick, the house falls apart. I have a lot of work ahead of me this weekend…

Photo by joka2000.

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Seriously.  Up until last week we hadn’t even had a cold come through our house.  Then last week I came down with a nasty cold that we’ve been passing around.  I got through that, and then this week came down with a stomach virus.  Yucky.  But hey, I lost 5 pounds.  You have to look at the bright side, right?

Since I’ve been sleeping for the better part of the last two days, I don’t have a post ready to go for you.  But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to read.  The MamaBlogga January group writing project has wrapped up, and there are a ton of good posts about “Me Time” to be read.  So please go visit these great blogs, and read all about taking time for yourself!

• Me. Me. Me! by Shawn
• Dear God, Why Me? by Megan Toney
• I’ll take care of me, one way or the other by Daisy
• Me Time by Jill
• I’m a person, not a calculator by Tracy
• Simple Things by Ursula
• Just Like Brigitte Bardot by Mama Zen
• Work IS My Time for Myself by Believer in Balance
• What Time is It? by Mommy Zabs
• Me-Time Is All in My Head by Marta Pelrine-Bacon
• Searching For My “Me Time” by Amanda
• Who Are We Kidding? by mumple
• Me Time by Lisa
• I Need Some Me Time! by Lynnae
• My Time on the Throne by Candace (Mama Mia)
• Did Wonder Woman Ever Cry? by Julie Arduini
• Me Time! by Joleene Libby
• Me, myself and I by Deb - Mom of 3 Girls
• Don’t Just Do Something - Sit There! by phyllis
• My “me time:is what I make of it by MomOnTheGo
• Me Time for Moms by Jordan (MamaBlogga )

I hope to be back into the swing of things tomorrow.  It all depends on how much I can catch up on today. It’s amazing how full my email box gets when I don’t read my email for a day!

Photo by aussiegall.

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