Summer's Over So Where Am I?

Again, I really stink at this challenge.  Sigh.

So, here's what's been happening this summer.

My oldest told me he wanted to do a "stand".  I figured out later, that he must have overheard me talking to a friend about a past yard sale, and realized he wanted to do a yard sale.  I tried to gently talk him out of it.  Then he came to me with a handful of DVD's.  I told him which ones were OK to keep and which had to stay.  He ended up finding 5 he wanted to sell.  The he decided he wanted 5 toys to sell as well.  Here is the result of what his yard sale consisted of.

He was ridiculously adorable!  He made a sign that said "Yrd Sal" and was shouting "Yard Sale" hoping someone would stop by.  The only person who walked by was an exterminator or apartment worker.  He quickly became very disappointed when no one stopped by.  Now, we were only out for about 1-2 minutes.  After telling him to just wait, we decided to move closer to the pool, thinking there might be more traffic.   We set him back up there, and it didn't help.  He was so deflated.  My heart breaks just thinking about it.  My little started yelling "Yard Sale", and my big stopped him.  He just didn't want any attention drawn to him.  I felt so bad.  I wished I had known someone that was around so I could have called to have them stop by.  We didn't stay out long before we packed it up and put the toys and DVD's away.  I told him the next time I saw a community yard sale, I'd buy a table for us and he could try again.  I haven't brought this day up since.  I just feel so bad for him.

Later in the month, I went to a scrapbooking crop.  I fortunately or unfortunately brought home more than I went with. I won a couple of raffles and games, so that was good, but bad was that I ended up taking more stuff home.  I also won a basket that I don't remember bidding on, so I must have put my ticket in the wrong bag.  It's not stuff I want, so I'll try to sell it if I can do that yard sale!  There was also a free swap table and I took a ton of stuff home from that.  I bought a bunch of paper flowers too.  Sigh.

Last summer I bought a grill to celebrate my big's birthday.  Only because the friend who was going to let us borrow his forgot and took it away for the weekend.  We used the new grill for the party and three days later, our apartment complex put up permanent grills and told us we had to remove ours.  Ugh.  Well, a few weeks ago I finally decided our grill didn't need to be in our storage unit any more, and gave it to the guy I work with.  Brand new grill, used once - with tin foil so the grill is pretty clean, gone.  Wasted money.  But, the party we bought it for was fantastic, and I gave a gift to a coworker who will use it and appreciate it.

So those are the big things from the past couple of months.  I am still impressed with the day to day things I'm throwing away.  I'm not keeping every piece of paper with a drawing on it, I'm not keeping sticker pages with one sticker left on it, I'm tossing small broken crayons. Tonight while the kids are out, I'm throwing away homemade bug catchers they made in camp.  They are cute and my kids love bugs, but they bought a plastic catcher that we bought when we visited the bug museum, so whenever they find a bug they want to use that one.  They won't miss the decorated shoeboxes with mesh covering a hole in the top.

I really want to get back into this (I know, I know I've said that before).  Along with my de-cluttering I've been wanting to organize better.  There is a great monthly checkoff list that I've been using for a while, but again, I'm behind on that.  There are also two 30 day spring cleaning checklists I've been holding on to (considering it's now the end of summer you can see how that has been going).  So the other night, I put together a calendar.  Each day has a chore on it from one of those lists.  I have it spread out onto dates to the end of September, but I'm OK with that.  I think it's realistic.  I want to incorporate my daily chores and meal planning as well.  I'm hoping it becomes a great visual for me to get back in gear.  I'm already a little behind on it, but I'm thinking this is going to be a good week to get started on it.  I'll have to add the September check off list soon, but I'll get things done when I get them done.  Sitting here now I've realized I need to print the calendar out.  Then it can be right in front of me and not sitting on the computer that I sometimes hate to get on, because I end up doing 20 other stupid things instead of doing what I got on to do.

Hopefully you'll hear from me soon!