2017....another year begins.

I suck at blogging..... well, not so much the blogging part as the actually doing something that is blog-worthy.

Here I am, two kids, a cat, and a husband. 30-something years old. And still an overflowing house that I am embarrassed to have people over.  Haven't eaten a meal at our dining room table in years.  Literally years.

THIS HAS TO STOP!  This is ridiculous!!!  Why is this so hard for me??

Random thoughts in Fran's head:

1. If I don't do something, I am going to end up on the show hoarders and my kids will be angry twenty-somethings talking about their ruined childhoods on national TV.  But, half (probably over half) of this stuff is theirs!

2. I may be raising a hoarder.  I pulled out a video gaming system (v-smile) that is designed for 3-4 year old kids. Literally no-one has touched this thing in over a year.  My 7-year-old has a used PlayStation 2, so the v-smile truly is baby stuff.  He cried that

3.Other blogs say to just get rid of it, they'll never notice.--DOESN'T WORK WITH THIS KID.  Mind like a steel trap.  Has asked about toys 3-4 months later and then told me he was sad he didn't have them to play with.  Major guilt trip!

4.  It is sinful to have this much stuff.  No, really.  We have way too much clothing, dishes, DVDs, etc.  We don't need this stuff, most of it is sitting around in a drawer being unloved.  Most of it doesn't spark joy.  (can you tell I am about to try Kon-Mari-ing everything in sight)???

5. If I don't make the time to do this now, it is never going to get done.

6. How much longer do I want to live this way?

2017 really is the year it is going to stop.  I have done something drastic, I am hiring professional help. I will post on here as I can.

and that one time that 2.5 years went by...

So, almost 30 months later.


I am still a cluttering semi-hoarder.

Working semi-full-time, with a house full of messy boys and a messy cat.

So, poor old Michael Finnegan begin again, shall we.   


I do my best work in spurts separated by years, apparently.

I did manage to potty train my second son last year.  And got rid of the training potty just yesterday.

Also, the crib and changing table are gone.

They left my house two weeks ago.

The toddler bed, glider, and small lingerie chest are going next.  Hopefully within the next month, because I am turning the nursery into a play room because if I step on one more hot wheels in the middle of the night, I may go insane.

Less work for hubby. Boo.

I have NOT dropped off the face of the earth, my husband lost his job.  I am working nights in order to bring some household money in.  Hence, less time for blogging.   I will return hopefully soon and post lots of updates, as I have continued in my less-is-more efforts, with some great success!

The great clothing purge of 2013

My bedroom was out of control.  It always seems to be the one room that gets out of control (well, besides the office/junk room, but I am not brave enough to go in there yet...it's all about the baby steps for me).

Here is the real, actual before of one wall.

Pretty bad.  I don't think I could make it any worse unless I emptied the entire dresser on the floor.  All of the (somewhat) closed drawers are stuffed full, by the way, as well as the hamper, which is covered by clothing in this photo.  I am also ashamed to admit that I had also commandeered two big drawers in my son's dresser.  I don't know how I got so many clothes!  Those stinkin' elves keep bringing things into my house...

So, I decided to get started by placing three containers on my bed, one for donating and two for keeping.  One of the keeps is for "I love this and it will fit 10 pounds from now" and one was for "worn but not worn often or sentimental".   Anything that was more than 10 pounds away was going to be gotten rid of.

Please ignore the rest of the room and unmade bed.  I am begging you.

I started going throught the clothes.  And found these.

Yep.  Clothing with tags.  And a pack of underwear that had never been worn.  I will spare you the photo of the underwear.   With clothing, my new philosopy is  "use it or lose it".  I opened the underwear (got rid of a lot of old undies) and washed them along with the pink shirt.  The black pants got donated. What good are clothes that you don't wear?

Two hours later, I had this donate pile (the bag on the left held a huge comforter at one point, so it is pretty big).

I also had these two somewhat smaller keep (but store) piles. 

Above on the left is a small pile for the rag bag. 

If I am not in the slightly-too-tight clothes by Labor Day, they are getting donated.

Here is the after.  Not perfect, but better.  Baby steps.

I love being able to fit (most) of my clothes into my dresser.  But the best part happened about a week later.  My four-year-old was playing in his room, and I heard. " Mommy!  Mommy! Come here!  Your clothes are gone!"  He showed me where he had opened his dresser to reveal the newly empty drawers. 

I told him that I had given some of my clothes away and I didn't need those drawers anymore.  He asked me if he could put some of his stuff in there.  It was cute and sweet and heartbreaking at the same time.  My clutter habit had encroached onto his life and he was asking if it was okay to use his own dresser.

So, it felt great to be able to say "Sure, sweetie, put anything you want in there.  It's yours."

Bye for now!

July 2nd check in

Just checking in.  I have made some progress (and I have a couple of projects underway).

I have done a pretty good job not buying anything new.  I have a couple of new shirts, BUT  I got rid of 11 maternity clothing items, threw away 10 ratty underwear (didn't I just do that??), and have another 15 clothing items boxed up.   I think a summary of the "great dresser throwaway" will be my next post!

So, we are gardening this year.  Unfortunately, Peter Rabbit is using our garden as an all-you-can-eat buffet.  We have harvested exactly 6 tomatoes, and I don't think that we are going to get any peppers at all this year (Peter Rabbit likes things spicy).  Zero on the squash.  This is technically our fault, as we have a wood pile 40 feet from the garden that we have been meaning to burn.  I am sure that Peter is living there, so now I don't have the heart to just set fire to it.  Less produce makes me sad. 

Update and an Aldi gripe

So, in the last two weeks I have managed to buy only two new items, a summer dress and a shirt, both of which are appropriate for church.  I have lost most of the baby weight, so many of my old clothes are hanging off of me and I am worried my bra is going to show.  Oh, and I also bought a cupcake holder from Aldi (BAD!!!  I know!!!).  There are no excuses, just that I took cupcakes to a picnic and didn't have a big enough holder so they all smooshed together and I wished that I had had a holder ...yadda...

yadda...
yadda...

yeah, I know I can make an excuse for anything.

While I was there, I noticed something.  (photo from my definitely-not-a smartphone).

Do you see it?  Aldi dropped the count on their baby wipes from 72 to 56.  BUT they kept the  same price.  They hadn't even changed the sign yet, which still had the old count. 

So, now I get 23% fewer wipes for my 99 cents.

Sneaky, Aldi.  Not cool.  Not the kind of "less" that this mama likes.

Anyway, as penance for my 3 new items, I got rid of 7 shirts that were too big and stained from the last 6 months of being spit-up on. 

Blog Fail

So, going back and reading old posts, I realize that I was supposed to be keeping track of what is coming in and going out.  I stopped doing that when I took on the new job last year because it was just too much.   I did buy less and throw some stuff out, but I failed to keep track of it, and I definitely didn't get rid of as much as I could have.

Don't worry.  There is PLENTY left.

So, I am going to start over again.  I can't promise that I won't have any more setbacks, but every object that I get rid of and every object that I DON'T bring into the house is a victory as far as I am concerned.

Less time in the kitchen.

I found a great deal on ground beef yesterday. It was marked down to $1.69/pound, which is a pretty good deal in my area.  It was 4.59 pounds and it had a use-by date of May 2nd (today).  Which means it needs to be used or frozen in a hurry because I am a stickler for that when it comes to ground beef.

In this situation, I practice a method that I first learned about on www.aslobcomesclean.com.

I pre-cook the ground beef.  I do this for safety/quality reasons, and also to speed up meal prep.




I placed the entire 4.59 pounds of ground beef in my largest skillet.  It looked like this.

That is a lot of ground beef.  I cooked it and drained the grease.  Then it looked like this:

I divided it into 4 equal portions (they are slightly less than a pound each due to loss from shrinkage, but in the spirit of eating less meat, they will work fine in any recipe calling for a pound of meat).  I bagged three of them up into freezer bags, and will use the other portion for tonight's dinner.

Let them cool for 15-20 minutes before placing in the freezer. 

This whole thing took less than 20 minutes and only dirtied up one pan and one spoon.



Meals that this method is appropriate for:

chili
tacos
sloppy joes
spaghetti
lasagna
goulash
shepard's pie
pretty much anything where you brown and crumble the ground beef before proceeding with the rest of the recipe

Precooking the ground beef will cut the time for these recipes by at least 15 minutes.

To me, that there is no noticeable difference in the finished recipe. Most of the recipes that I use that call for ground beef also call for the addition of spices, sauces and gravies. I really can't tell that the ground beef has been previously cooked then frozen. It also thaws much more quickly and can be broken up to defrost in the microwave in a minute or to. Or, if making chili or spaghetti, just add the frozen beef straight to the pot along with the other ingredients.


Meals that this method is not appropriate for:

meatballs
hamburgers
meatloaf
anything where you DON'T brown and crumble the ground beef first

A year gone.

Wow, there went a year.

It is now February 2013 and my year of less turned into a year of more.

Started the job.  Things got crazy.  Found out I was pregnant.  Hated the job.  Goodbye job.  Had a baby.  Staying at home.

So we find ourselves back here.  A year gone.    We just got that entertainment center out of our garage a month ago.

So, let's start over, shall we?

The year of less time??

So somehow my year of less has turned into a year of more.  After being unemployed for nearly a year, I have found and started a new job. All within a week.  With it I need an work wardrobe, since the atmosphere is business professional.


I went shopping.  It had to be done.  I donated 2/3 of my old work wardrobe with the 100 pieces of clothing challenge.  Additionally, I have lost about 20 pounds since November, so much of what I used to be able to wear is now way too big for me (we are talking dragging the floor too big).  The good news is that I kept a few good work pieces from my skinnier days, so I have a base to start from, but I was sorely in need of some more things to tide me over for the short term.


I bought:
1 belt
1 pair of pumps


3 shirts
2 sweaters/cardigans
2 skirts
2 dresses
2 new pairs of hose which will probably get ripped the first time I wear them.


You know what that means, I have to get rid of some things.  We are looking to get a new flat-screen TV so we decided to get rid of the old entertainment center, which is only big enough to hold a 27 inch old-school TV.  In its place we moved a dresser from another room.  We have moved the entertainment center to the garage until we can take it to Goodwill. So, one thing down.


We also decided to pare down our video collection.


Bye to 30 VHS tapes!


So, I think we came out ahead.  Meaning with less stuff afterwards.