Happy New Year!  I am starting over.  Really I am.  Maybe what I need to do to keep this blog going is to set up more posts in advance.

To kick off the new year I am focusing on cleaning my house.  With a toddler running around I am finding more and more things he shouldn’t touch and things that are just in the way.  I have also been looking forward to when he is a school age kid and wants to have a friend over or when he is a teenager.  Hopefully we will have moved by the teen years (and the elementary school years, God willing), but I don’t want the CHAOS to follow us.  We hardly have anyone over now, but I want to have more time with my “new mommy” friends next summer.

I typically overestimate the amount of time it will take to clean up a spot.  I am also a perfectionist.  It keeps me from doing a lot of things.  If I can’t do it right, I am not going to do it.  Driving (I was 20 before I got my license), auditioning (I would love to be in a show, but I won’t audition if I am not going to get the part), knitting (I have no “first swatch” to show, because I ripped everything out).  If I can’t make my closet look exactly how I want it to look I would rather not put my clothes away.  I don’t cook because I am afraid of messing up.  I don’t hang art or photos on my walls (partly because they are 160 year old plaster and lathe) because I am don’t want to regret where I hung things.  Crafts, school work, packing, and house work.  These are all things I get anxious about.  I am working on that.

I have started the decluttering with Christmas.  As I got out and put away ornaments I put some aside.  I filled a bag with ornaments I have received from students over the years so I can hang them on my tree at school.  I also pulled ornaments out for my sister.  She really likes angels, so she is getting all my angels plus some that don’t really fit my newly established “themes”.  Any she doesn’t want will go to our church for the next Christmas bazaar.  I have decided to stick with some themes for decorating next year.  Snowmen, stars, primary colors, ornaments that represent things that happened during the year, and Hallmark ornaments.  I would like to get a small tree for my son’s room to hang snowmen ornaments on.  When we have a bigger place I would like to have more than 1 tree.  I envision one that is all stars and white lights, one that is my Hallmark ornaments (mostly Peanuts and Wizard of Oz), and one that is ornaments we have made or represent our years as a family.

There is so much more in my home I need to weed out, but that’s a story for another day.