Follow Up Fridays a few days late...

My fridge...my lovely fridge!

It looked like this:


and the door looked like this:

YUCK! I hated this fridge....

So we cleaned it out and got a new one...and it has a light!


Imagine that...a fridge with a light in it!

The new door looks lovely...


Four weeks have passed and where are we now?

Well...we have more food...the cousins came to visit on the weekend! And we still have a lovely light...how did we do without a light for so long?


See this morning's breakfast on the middle right shelf? There's a post about that coming soon...YUMMMMMMM....just wait! (and yes, I know the tupperware is backwards...)


And the door...with pretty much the same stuff as four weeks ago...And yes, that is a sign that says "Do Not Eat This." Let's just say it's recipe insurance...notes like that mean that the ingredients I need for recipes are still in the fridge when I go to cook.

Follow Up Friday - Clear desk top

I'm not sure if Sarah is still doing Follow Up Fridays (she moved her organizing stuff from The Home Organisation Project to her main blog) but I am going to still do it. It's a great idea and I'm glad she came up with it!

Four weeks ago, I cleared up my desk at work.

It looked great.


Now it looks like this.


It's sort of not fair because before I leave on Friday, I wipe everything down, but I've been working on only touching each piece of paper once and tidying up after I finish something. I've been setting aside fifteen minutes at the end of the day to sort out my desk and my email before I head home...and it's working.

Follow Up Friday - Email

I have no pictures today, but I somewhere recently (I can't find it) I did mention that I’d sorted out my work email...I got my inbox down to less than 20 messages and my sent box was clear. It was lovely. As I read email, I responded and filed it or deleted as necessary.

And then my kid got sick again.

And now there are almost 200 emails in the inbox and probably close to the same in the sent box. How did I get back here? Well, easy…I got overwhelmed by the number of emails when I came back to work after a weekend and an extra few days off due to the sick kid.

If J had been healthy would the state of my email be any better? WHO KNOWS!

But.

What worked:
My filing system
Taking ten minutes at the end of the day to file any items that didn’t get filed while I was working on them

What didn’t work:
Being away for a longish period of time

So…I think my system works…for now…I find email is an ever evolving beast.

(I'll link up to The Home Organisation Project when Sarah posts a Follow Up Friday)

Follow Up Friday - Kitchen Counter

It's Friday...let's go back in time a bit and see what I was up to four weeks ago.

Apparently I cleaned off my kitchen counter clutter spot. I didn't post the finished product until much later, but that's what I did the week of February 18!


It looked like this when I was done tidying it up...



And now it looks like this:



Not bad...I've been trying to get through the mail every night if possible. We need a better spot for the recycling (it usually sits where that plastic bag is - that bag had something in it that needed to be returned to the hardware store and Alex took it with him when he went to work tonight). Alex takes the recycling out daily, mostly because we have nowhere to keep it. I think there's probably room in the cupboard directly below the spot for a bin except that J has claimed that as her cupboard and since it's home to just plastics, we let her empty it and fill it and "cook" from it and I don't want her playing in the recycling...

As for spending an unlimited amount of money on our kitchen, if that was the case, I'd actually move! I like our place, but I'd love a bigger kitchen that we could actually eat in...and a yard so that we could have our own garden...kind of hard when you live in a condo!

Go see Sarah

I participated in Sarah's first Follow-up Friday last week and she featured my little project (the Costanza wallet) on her site today.

If you're on the organizing/decluttering/getting tidy band wagon, go visit her! Her Follow-up Friday idea is great! Every Friday she hosts a place for us to look back at what our project was four weeks ago, see where it is now, and figure out what worked well or didn't work at all.

The bonus?

I'm being really good about tweaking and maintaining because I really don't want to show you something that I sorted out very well that looks like a tornado hit it in four weeks time! So my spot by the phone is still looking perky, my wallet is pretty empty, my desk is fairly clutter free, my fridge is sparkling...it's working...

How many weeks does it take for things to become a habit (or to break an old one)? Is it three? Six? The voices in my head say it takes three weeks to form a new and I'm going with that...so really, if I'm maintaining my organized spots for four weeks (and the systems/plans/procedures/schedules work) by the time it's Follow-up Friday, it should be routine. Right?

Follow Up Friday - the wallet...

Sarah over at The Home Organisation Project has started Follow Up Fridays. Basically the idea is that you look back at the project you completed four weeks and figure out what worked, what didn't work, how you can change it...you know, evaluate your work!



Four weeks ago I was just starting with Org Junkie's 52 week organizing challenge. I started with my wallet. Something small, something simple, but something that needed some real work!



It was full to the point of overload! I had even resorted to referring to it as a Constanza wallet...



I managed to get rid of tons of stuff and get it to close! Yay...achievement...but could I keep it that way!?!?!

I knew what my biggest problems were:

Too many cards (I haven't added any!)
Too many receipts
Too many reminder cards

Friday evening is my day for maintaining my wallet. I stand at the kitchen counter once J is tucked into her bed and empty my wallet - that's where the calendar is for those reminder cards and where the binder is for the receipts.



So here were are four weeks later - there are a couple of receipts in there and a post-it note with an appointment reminder.


And it still closes!

So my weekly clean out seems to be working....