Puttering (Mom's 30 Minute Blog Challenge)

Do you ever have a ton of things to do and instead of focusing on one task you find yourself puttering all over the house, straightening, tossing, wiping, dusting, etc? Taking the time to study your window treatments, the placement of your furniture and how you maybe need to update your wall hangings and photos. Is it productive, worthwhile or necessary? 

I find I need these days. It gets the entire house to a slightly nicer level and seems to calm me as well as infuse me with new ideas to freshen up my home. For some reason fall seems to be the time of year I do this the most. I think it’s my own seasonal nesting instinct…the days are getting cooler and shorter and we are all starting to spend more time inside the house. It’s nice to freshen thing up and get it all warm and cozy for the coming winter months.

My puttering session last week resulted in a few curtains getting changed out, new floor plan ideas for the playroom, moving a piece of toy organization/storage from the playroom to my son’s room and taking a small table out of hiding to place near the front door with a fall placemat and gourds.  Our house got a nice dose of fall decorating and I'm looking forward to updating the playroom into a more functional family room instead of the toy dumping ground it has become. 

Slow down the next time you find yourself running around the house frantically cleaning.   Take a minute to really look at your surroundings, enjoy the nice things and take a minute to re-think the things that just aren't working.

Here are some links to a few decorating and organizational blogs that I like:

The Nesting Place
The Nester has a great series she’s posting right now called 31 Days to a Less Messy Nest.

I’m an Organizing Junkie
As well as keeping a whole lot of bloggers meal plans organized by hosting Menu Plan Monday, Laura offers great tips on de-cluttering and organizing as well as reviews on organizational and storage products.

Home Sanctuary
Rachel Anne offers monthly ‘small things’ to tackle around your home. You can earn points for monthy giveaways by slowly turning your home into your own sanctuary.

This post was written as my submission to Steady Mom's 30 Minute Blog Challenge.   Check out this week's post Tired Moms - Do You Need a Break?.   The post also includes links to other submissions.

 

Personal Validation (Mom's 30 Minute Blog Challenge)

Being a stay at home mom can get lonely and rather dull some days. There is a list of chores that need to get done every day, often multiple times I might add. Often the lack of appreciation for the things that we do each day makes us feel very ‘un-validated’ in our work. I try to keep myself busy and find new things to do and new skills to learn. I really enjoy cooking, menu planning, and getting a good bargain. Some of the times just the personal satisfaction I get from accomplishing these things helps me feel good. Other times I find that yeah I’m doing interesting things, but I don’t have any one around during the day to share these things with. I’m not overly social and don’t see myself as a ‘lady who lunches’ kind of gal. But I often find that I end up either talking to myself or searching out friends online via Facebook or a variety of special interest forums.

I just started volunteering in my daughter’s class this morning. My son is in preschool and the timeframe works out just right. I’m looking forward to interacting with the kids, helping the teacher out with clerical tasks and just having somewhere I need to go every Wednesday morning. Even though it’s an assignment I took on as part of contributing to my daughter’s classroom experience it is also something personally validating.

Blogging for me is probably the thing that is most personally validating – sometimes to the point of selfishness I might say. I’ve always loved writing and taking pictures. My content is comprised of things that are very important to me: my family, my home, food, our finances and my own sanity.

I’m hoping this winter to find snippets of time to actually explore more things that I want to do. I’d love to put a little more effort into decorating my home, give scrapbooking a try, resume exercising regularly, and of course spend more time writing. I love being home with my kids, love having the time and flexibility to care for my family, to cook good meals, to shop for bargains and really ‘make’ our home. But I know that I need to fill that out with a few more things that are a little more focused on Dawn and not just mommy

This post was written as my contribution to Steady Mom’s 30 Minute Blog Post challenge.  Click here to

check out this week's 30 Minute blog post on Steady Mom's Morning Routine as well as links to other posts in the 30 Minute Blog Post challenge.

Ok I'm going to admit the longest part of writing this post was trying to find a picture of myself to share.   Not only do I detest most pictures of myself...there just aren't that many as I'm always behind the camera instead of in front of it!