new years resolutions

One month in…

How is your 27 Thing Fling working for you? Are you looking at things differently? Do you find yourself flinging from a spot that we haven’t even started? (Or do you want to leave it solely to be able to count ‘later’? If so, fling it and add it to whatever place you are counting. 🙂 )Are you questioning your purchases?

By the way, this is NOT a ‘no shopping’ exercise. What it is is a ‘Do I NEED it’ exercise, ‘Is it worth working another 5 hours of my life away’ exercise, an ‘Am I buying it because it’s easier than looking for the old one’ exercise, and a ‘Where am I going to put it exercise’….  (Ok, officially exhausted. Haven’t exercised that much in forever!)

I have purchased (other than food, etc) a few pairs of pants, a nice stack of CD’s, some sweaters/tops in colors that I found worked well with my leaner, more organized closet (All from Goodwill. I just LOVE my Goodwill!!!)

And, some Christmas stuff on mega clearance that I KNEW I could use. (Like wrapping paper. Once I make it into the guest room, where the wrapping paper lives, I will be flinging some things there, and HOW could you turn down 90% off?)

Yes, faulty logic, and possibly how my house got to the state it is in. But, being that my Christmas things were just out….

Ah, see how easily we can delude ourselves? (Gotta watch those KNEW/HOW equations. But in this case, I feel confident.)

I bought a few house decorations too. My father was selling this tea set on his site and I couldn’t resist buying it. Its precious, isn’t it? And so me!

patches

So, we are all on the same page, right? This is not about denying yourself, but about trying to find yourself, amidst all the ‘stuff’.

The next category is: File cabinets. Yeah, this one should keep you busy for a while. And what perfect timing, as Tax Season is upon us.

Is your shredder up to the task? And by the way, you don’t get a pass simply because you keep your financial and paper life in something other than a filing cabinet. Any box, basket, drawer or pile otherwise unnamed counts here. But, I will give you a day or so to contemplate this next project.

Because I believe I promised a little deviation to the list.

Its computer clutter. It’s digital images. Let’s grab the bull by the horns, ok? (This is not about past behaviors. We will get to that. Photographs have their own category! We are going to establish new behaviors.)

Tomorrow is February 1. What needs to occur is this: (And for some of you, it’s so much a non-issue, you may not believe I am bothering.)

Get your cameras. All of them, phone too, if you use it as a camera.

FIRST. Have you uploaded all the images you took in ‘JAN 2010’? If not, do so. Create a folder with that date, put everything there. After you take whatever photos you may plan on taking today, Jan 31. (Happy birthday, Andrew!)

NEXT. LOOK at the images. Are there blurry, dark, or other obviously bad images there; images that are really meant for the recycle bin? Then FLING them. Right into the recycle bin.

THIRD. Rename them. I don’t know how to do so particularly in your program or your computer, so I will tell you this–Name all the images 2010-JAN_ Or JAN 2010_ or whatever suits you best. But get the date in there. (If they are all pictures of the cat, then possibly 2010- CAT….) What I am suggesting is ESTABLISH a naming system, and NAME every file in your JAN 2010 picture folder. But only the ones worth keeping.

NOW. Is there any image you would like to print? (If you do photo editing, then insert this step here.) Print them. Order prints. Today. Sign up for Kodak Gallery, or Shutterfly, or Snapfish or load them back onto a card and take them to Target or to wherever, but get them PRINTED. After all, WHY did you take the picture in the first place?

LASTLY.  Burn a CD. Back up in some fashion. Create a second set of these images. Grab a fine point sharpie, LABEL the CD in the center, 2010-JAN, photos. 1 of … . Put the CD into a jewel case, and create a spot to store it. Create offsite storage online for additional backup protection. Use the online gallery at Kodak (about $20 a year IF you don’t order photos from them) or whichever place floats your boat… (Smugmug is my choice. REFERRAL LINK GETS YOU a DISCOUNT when you sign up USING THIS LINK ONLY)

Because it is only January, it’s a DOABLE number of photos. Most people take very few images in January. But we are establishing something that is going to be important later in the flinging.

But before I do that, I am heading outside with my camera to take pictures of the snow!!! Looks like a foot or so!

Going out strong…

As of last night, I had flung 342 items. Not 27 a day. But at least 27 each day I worked at flinging. How are your numbers?

For this last week of January, we will finish off the kitchen flinging.

8.  Refrigerator/freezer

9.  Kitchen cabinets/pantry (Moved from way down on the list, since we are in the kitchen)

You CAN fling food… Just, no food fights, ok? Systematically, shelf by shelf. Look at the items in your fridge. Do you have four opened bottles of one salad dressing? Soy sauce packets, dying green peppers in ziplock baggies, left-overs left over from last year?

If all 4 bottles of dressing are almost full, gather them together at least, and erase them from your mental grocery list! And, I would suggest adding salad to your menu for the next week or so! (My mental grocery list forces me to buy spaghetti sauce repeatedly.)

When you get to the freezer, take a pad and pencil. Were you aware you had that many frozen pork chops?

Can you go through the pantry as well, and create a menu to get you through the first few weeks of February without having to do a major shop?

This isn’t about depleting your stockpiles or anything along those lines. To those of you who have a clue, and a handle on this, realize some of us are clueless!

Do you shop, and then wonder what on earth you are going to cook for dinner because there is no food in the house??

One of my failings is I want for dinner to be a meal. Not just dinner. So, I am perfectly capable of hosting a meal for 6 –12-20 people. When it comes down to having dinner on the table? Again? I mean, didn’t I just make dinner last night?

You should be finished flinging the bathrooms, the bedroom and the kitchen by Sunday. Note, I did only the master bedroom. Tackle EACH bedroom as a separate entity, following the flinging rules above.(Or don’t, no one is checking on you.) Doesn’t need to be done by Sunday. There will be a LOT of year left by the time we finish one complete round!

Monday, February 1 we are making a small deviation in the list. (More to come in Sunday’s blog.)

And, since I am posting this on Tuesday, and will not be posting again this week, let me say “Happy Birthday, Daddy,” one day early!  You can go to Country Joe’s to wish him a happy 65 yourself. (Daddy is probably not following this flinging blog. He is so NOT a flinger.)2009 10 NYC-295 8x10 

Aunt Gael, Daddy, and me, Oct 2009

Yesterday’s progress….

…and a little Yippee….

Yippee first.

One of my credit card companies finally gave in and sent me the 0% APR balance transfer offer that I have been coveting. (They were probably missing my monthly electronic transfer to them, since I paid off my card in October.) I knew they would see reason. I’ve checked, month after month, and until the mail yesterday, the best they could do was a transfer that “enjoyed the same rate as my purchase rate”…. Umhm, ya see, somehow, transferring to 17.9 % isn’t all that exciting. But, if you wait long enough, they CAVE. (See October’s blog for more details.) It couldn’t have come at a better time, either, as the low ‘special rate’ I was enjoying at the other company expired on Jan 2. For 20 days, they thought I would enjoy my new, (ridiculously) higher rate.

Huh. They are toast. Card will be paid off as soon as the transfer goes through.

Now, back to flinging….after

Look at that! I have the pots and pans drawers, and the dreaded Tupperware cabinet finished as well.

What I flung yesterday were memories. I had a nice walk through many a Saturday afternoon with my friend in New York, when we would be literally climbing around wooden pallets at Fish’s Eddy warehouse in St. George, creating table settings out of the piles of china stacked everywhere. It was a great place to rummage, and we always had a blast! The memories, they are still on the shelf. But some of the dishware is going to Goodwill. (I can still serve 22, as long as you aren’t looking for matching 5 piece settings. Seating, however is BYOC.)

Today, we are flinging under the sink. Fun.