This morning I said “Goodbye” to Handprints on the Wall. I admire Kendra and Sashwhy for making the difficult decision to stop blogging and focus their time on the important things going on in their lives right now. I’m sad to see “Minimizing Monday” leave because in the two weeks since it started it has left me super motivated to let go of the objects cluttering my life.
Did you clean out your kitchen with me? I felt like I was not doing a good job of letting things go, but in the end I filled up 4 paper grocery bags and I said goodbye to one toaster oven that I was “storing” in my pantry. I was amazed again by how many things I had in my kitchen that we never used. I had a lot of “someday I’ll make . . .” baking dreams that I just told myself it was ok to let go of. Right now I want to minimize my time spent in the kitchen and to focus that time on making healthy meals rather than baking sweet treats. This meant that I was never going to make that cheesecake in that springform pan still in the box. Maybe someday things will change, and at that point I can invest in some new baking supplies. If you cleared out your kitchen with me, what did you let go of? Were you surprised by what stuff you found you were holding onto but not using?
I’m open to your suggestions for what regular weekly feature you would like to see on my blog each Monday and Tuesday. Every other day of the week has one except these two days. I want to bring you something that will be useful, but I need to be realistic about the time it will take me to prepare it. I work on my blog less on weekends than I do during the week. One idea I had was to do a weekly wrap-up, but I’m not sure how useful it would be to my daily readers. Any ideas or feedback for me?
I really enjoy your blog and don’t think that it is necessary to do a weekly summary s it is easy to scroll down the week’s worth of wisdom (just trying to save you time and energy).Sue in Danville, NH
Heather – I subscribe to Menus 4 Moms Daily Reminders. They send me a daily e-mail reminding me to spend a maximum of 15 minutes cleaning 1 thing in your house. http://www.menus4moms.com …exerpt from their e-mails…Every week the daily tasks will focus on one area of the house. After each 5 weeks the rotation starts over. The areas are:- Foyer, Living Room & Dining Room- Kitchen (including pantry) & Porches – Master Bedroom (including closet & bathroom) & Kids' Rooms – Den/Family Room, Other Room (office, craft room, extra bedroom, etc.) & Powder Room – Laundry Room, 2nd Full Bathroom, Garage, & Miscellaneous These may not match your home exactly, but they are areas common to most homes and you can adapt them as needed. As a busy mom, I find it helpful to help keep me cleaning things I normally wouldn't "build in" to my daily "straighten up" routine. -Tracy
Heather,I have loved all your posts that have inspired your readers to “do” something — creative ideas of things to do with kids, secrets of a home baker, the green mama post about reusing containers to plant seeds, and most recently minimizing Mondays. (I haven’t cleaned out a closet yet, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t inspired by it — it took me several months to use the cake recipe and I loved it!)Since you mentioned the time factor – what about having “inspirational” guest posts on Mondays?Thanks for all you do!M
I participate in Menu Plan Monday over at OrgJunkie.com. If you’re saving money through couponing and other strategies, meal planning is essential! I also like posting my meal plan every Sunday evening because it keeps me accountable to get it done for my own family. My husband and I sit down each Sunday night and take a few minutes to brainstorm meals (while looking over the grocery store ads to see what the loss leaders are).
Thanks so much for the comment, Sara. I’m working on changing some of the pink! I agree, it’s a bit too much pink!!!
Thanks Heather – never saw the “about” tab before. My thoughts about changing font/color scheme – the background is pink, the headers are pink, linkies are pink, lots of pink going on. I thought maybe switching the colors of the header might help break up the pink?PS – I’m cleaning out my closet…but I don’t think I’m ruthless enough, still a lot in there. :)
Thanks for everyones ideas!Sara – Visit “About” in the top menu bar to find out more about me. Could you please be more specific about your comment/suggestion on my headlines? What about them is making it difficult to determine which ones you’ve read already? Thanks!
Hmmm – maybe you could help us newbies get to know you better. I don’t know a thing about you! :)Also, I would like to suggest switching up the colors/font. All the pink headlines start to blur together and I have to quickly re-read to see if I’ve already gone through that post or if it’s new. Just a thought.All in all though, I love your blog and read it several times a day. My mailbox if full of freebies each week because of you!
Hmm….maybe you could do a day with a roundup of free restaurant treats for the week, like the Ben and Jerry’s thing for this week? (“Sweet Eats and Treats,” for example.) I’m not sure how far ahead of time you usually find out about these, though. Or you could do a day dedicated to upcoming Freebie events (like the Lowe’s/HomeDepot/Michael’s stuff you already post about). It seems like both of those are information that you might already have, so it could be easy to compile ahead of time. Or you could take turns participating in some other blog carnival that falls in with your personal goals, and highlighting it — like Menu Plan Monday on http://orgjunkie.com, or the “what can you get for $5 to donate to charity challenge at http://becentsable.blogspot.com or the End ’08 Great (July is “Conquer the Clutter”) challenges at http://happytobeathome.net/are-you-up-for-a-challenge/
I really liked the minimizing Monday’s. Perhaps you could find some way to blog on ideas to simplify our lives. I was inspired and cleared out a closet that was considered a junk closet and now it is acutally useful. Then I repainted the room it was in and redid a dresser. All because I decluttered a closet. I have to say you really encouraged me.
How about minimizing your waist Monday!! We all could motivate eachother to put down the choclate and exercise in new ways…help eachother stay on track. Being that a lot of your readers are moms this would be of intrest I think!!
Aw, how sad. You and those ladies were my inspiration to create my “100 Things Challenge” that starts Friday.I don’t have any suggestions other asking them if you can continue Minimizing Mondays.When a bloggy friend was too ill to do her annual pre-Thanksgiving challenge, with her permission I took it over. Maybe they would allow you the same thing.And, of course, you are more than welcome to ride along on our month of purging and de-cluttering with the 100 Things Challenge.