Huber Hof Academy

Huber Hof Academy

Jul. 3, 2007

Tackle it Tuesday

Well the last time I made my Tackle it Tuesday list and wrote an entry about it I had such great success completeing my tasks I thought that I would do it again : ) So here is todays list:

~~Vaccuum all floors~~
~~Wash all of the children's laundry~~
~~Dust the family room~~
~~Clean off the kitchen table that is once again plastered with school and craft materials~~
~~Clean laundry room floor~~
Fix the cow barn door (we'll see if I have enough strenght to lift it and screw in the screws at the same time. *grin*)

Wish me luck!

Blessings, BChsMamaof3

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Jan. 12, 2007

Letting go ~ It feels so good!!

Posted in Decluttering and Organization

I have two weaving looms in my dining room. Yes the dining room, because this is the largest room in the house and the least used room : ) Originally I had purchased the first one a very large 4 harness floor loom that is a beautiful homemade loom but it is about 49" square and quite a mammoth of a machine! A couple of years later a very nice elderly lady that had befriended me and was a very skillful weaver and artisan passed away and left me her Leclerc floor loom and a whole bunch of accessories to go along with it. Luckily hers was one that sort of collapses and takes up less space but none the less they still require a large amount of room.

Quite some time ago I decided that I really didn't need both looms and I wasn't doing any weaving at the time and couldn't see myself spending a lot of time doing it in the future so I listed the largest one in the buy and sell paper hoping that someone else was looking for one. Well there were no takers : (

I relisted and relisted it all the while continuing to drop the price lower and lower until I was just about giving it away. Still no one called and I gave up. Well in the spirit of decluttering and letting go of things that aren't sentimental or of some real importance I decided to give it away. I posted it on a couple of the yahoo homeschool groups that are in our area or nearby hoping that maybe this way I would be able to find it a new home. Well lo and behold the next morning I had 3 takers!! So we emailed back and forth and I shared photos of it and she decided the first one that had responded would take it. We arranged for a pickup day and it was set!

Monday morning I waited eagerly for her to arrive with her husband to come and disassemble the loom and load it in their vehicle to take home. I was really happy thinking of how nice it would be to reclaim that space in my dining room that had been occupied for the last 5 years.
Well they arrived and started to work on taking it apart and marking down where pieces came from so that they wouldn't have trouble putting it back together again and I started to feel sick.

As I stood there watching them work away at it I started to get panicky that maybe I had made a mistake! (Phase one) Maybe I should have kept it. Maybe I could have waited a little longer and sold it for a little bit of money. Maybe I needed it but just didn't know it yet. Maybe, Maybe, Maybe!! Oh, if they could have only read my mind. (Phase two) Okay, I'm past the panic stage now I'm rolling into the just let it go phase : ) Now I'm telling myself I don't really need it. I'm not going to be using it and I haven't used it for sooo long. She's going to love it and use it and give it a good home. I'm making the right decision. Just let it go, let it go!

Now you probably think I'm a real loony toon. LOL. As I think of it now I hope that I didn't have some strange vacant expression on my face as I worked out my inner dilemma : )

Well it was finally all packed away in their SUV and they were waving goodbye and I rolled into Phase three. I felt GREAT! I shut the door and looked at the open space it had created and I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me. I can't quite describe it but I felt like dancing! I couldn't believe how emotionally tied to me it had been but once I decided to let it go WOW, and I know that I made her day by giving it away to her.

A couple of days later as I was tidying up some stuff in the entrance I came across an envelope with my name on it and I had no idea what was in it. I opened it up and inside was the most beautiful thank you card that she had written to me and just left behind for me to find. How thoughtful of her : ) I know I made the right decision.

Blessings, BChsMamaof3

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Jan. 10, 2007

I'm NOT going to buy anything UNECESSARY for 30 DAYS

Posted in Decluttering and Organization

Amy has added another challenge to go along with the Colossal Clutter Clean-Up and this one is called the "Clutter Free for 30" Challenge. This one gets us to take a closer look at exactly what we are purchasing and what we may be thinking about purchasing and deciding whether it is a necessary item or not.

This is a good one because I tend to be a bit of an impulse shopper at times. Having myself stop and think about what I have in my hand and really making sure it is something I need will be good. I usually have a shopping list when I go into town listing exactly what we need but sometimes I only get some of the things down on it or I stray from the list as I go down the aisles thinking, oh that might be something nice to try or I wonder if the kids would enjoy this one better than that one and maybe get both!

So this Friday when we venture into town for the big shop : ) I am going to stick strictly to the list and make sure that I don't buy anything more than the basic staples that I have to have on hand. This should be easier on the wallet to! Oh hubby will be happy. LOL.

If you want to participate feel free to add the clutter free for 30 button to your site as well linking it back to the original post : )

Blessings, BChsMamaof3

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Jan. 7, 2007

Colossal Clutter Clean-Up starts today!

Posted in Decluttering and Organization

Today is the big day! The Colossal Clutter Clean-Up begins and Amy has so kindly put together an organizer to download for free to go along with the challenge. I can't wait as it is part of my goals for 2007 and I am really excited to start. And as you can see from previous posts I have already got a jump start on some of my decluttering that needs to be done around the house. Now I will have a group of other ladies focusing on the same task as me to hold me accountable.

I'll keep you posted on how I'm doing : )

Blessings, BChsMamaof3

"Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." Psalm 51:10

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Jan. 4, 2007

My new & improved sewing bins : )

Posted in Decluttering and Organization

Today I have been working on decluttering and organizing my sewing area. I categorized all of my sewing notions and sorted them out into groups and went through the stacks of material under my sewing table. I'm a bit of a fabric-aholic : ) so there were some of them that I have decided to part with. I think that I will donate them to the local 4H group for the young girls' sewing club. I'm sure that they can find a use for them!

As I was going through everything and trying to decide what in the world I was going to do with all of it so that it would stay neat and tidy but still be accessible so that I could find what I needed when I wanted it I had a light bulb moment : ) I have been saving the hard plastic diaper wipe containers that I buy for Little M every month for K so that he can store Lego and his hotwheel cars and so on inside of them and they would be perfect for all of my sewing notions!

They worked perfectly as you can see from my photo above. I have some old kitchen cupboards mounted in my laundry room for storage, so I cleaned out one of them creating a sewing cupboard for myself and stacked the diaper wipe boxes inside them. I love it! On the outside of each bin I taped a paper label listing all of the contents inside of the bin so when I open the cupboard up I can quickly scan the bins and find the one I want with exactly the right stuff in it, and when I'm done I can close the cupboard door. No more sewing notions spilling out all over my craft table. Yay!! I'm one step closer to a clean home : )

Blessings, BChsMamaof3

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Jan. 3, 2007

Pre-Colossal Clutter Clean-Up

Posted in Decluttering and Organization

As the Colossal Clutter Clean Up is fast approaching its starting date of January 7th, Amy has started us off with a little warm up exercise before we begin. As we all take down our christmas decorations and pack them away for another year she has encouraged us to take a deeper look at them and decide which of them we really truly need, which are sentimental and out of all of the sentimental ones how many do we "truly" need?

This is a tough job! I have an awful lot of decorations, more than I need to fully decorate our tree but have been hanging onto them year after year just in case. As the children removed them from the tree we sorted them out into little groupings: the babies first christmas & mom and dad's first christmas ornaments, special antique ornaments that grandma had passed along to us, my really beautiful snowglobe ornaments that I have gotten over the years and then the regular coloured christmas ball ornaments. We have a ton of the christmas ball ornaments. Some of them are slightly damaged and others are missing hangers but you know I still have them (I had planned to replace the hangers and so on). So they were the first to be picked out for removal. Then we sorted through them some more and picked out any extra special ones that we really like with paintings on them or glitter and saved them and all of the rest were packed up for donation to the goodwill.

Then I tackled the christmas light collection that has grown over the years. How many sets of lights do I really need? This year we only used one strand of multi coloured lights that flash and do all sorts of funky things : ) I must have at least 10 strands of clear lights that I used to use on the tree before the children were born. I know, how boring as my husband would say. Hence this is why they are no longer used! So off they went into another bag to either be sent to the goodwill or to my mother who does a lot of lighted crafts. She may find a good use for them.

Last on the list was all of the little knicky knacky stuff that just sort of grows over the years. The santa doorknob hangers (I have quite a few), the many different christmasy candle holders that I got from who knows where anymore, the wooden snowmen that are supposed to hang on the fireplace but never do because when we light the fire they have to be removed and so on. Many of these items were also bagged for the goodwill where they can find a new home with someone who is more in need of them than we are : )

A job well done. We now have the really important things that we enjoy the most left and the others that spend most of their time in storage ready for their new homes.

Blessings, BChsMamaof3

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." Psalm 51:10

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Vancouver Island Time

About Me

A stay at home mom's blog about our journey through homeschooling with three cuties 9, 5, & 2 years old and everyday life home on the farm.

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