Mojo

So it's been a few weeks now, and I'm still loving my Erin Condren planner (or, as my friend Laura keeps calling it, the Aaron Carter planner). I could go on, but the video pretty much says it all.

The ironic thing here is that now that I don't have a job, I'm finding that there isn't actually a lot to plan each week. Most of what I put into my planner is health tracking stuff, organizational projects I'm working on, and like, the one social thing I do each week (shout out to Hermit Lyfe, what!).

Anyway, let's have some real talk. 

Motivation is really key to anything that involves you getting out of bed. The whole reason I started organizing my life was that I lacked motivation. You should have seen my apartment back then - I didn't even take "before" photos when I first started this whole thing because they were HELLA DEPRESSING. Maybe I just didn't want to confront myself with how bad things had gotten, whatever. After about twelve thousand anxiety attacks, I decided that I needed to make small, successful changes to my life that would keep me going and get me into a routine that changes my lifestyle.

Here's what I learned about this process:

1. It's a PROCESS.

So here I am, two years after making the decision to organize my life and home, and I'm nowhere near as far into this as I thought I'd be. I thought by now, I'd be in a place where I feel comfortable having people over. I thought by now, I'd be getting into organzing OTHER people's lives! I thought by now I'd be way better at this than I am.

This shit is REALLY slow going.

Everyone goes at their own pace. Anytime you're making a change to your lifestyle and you want it to stick, the change is really slow to happen. Too often, we want to have a major change right away, and we go from zero to 60 immediately. The first little bit goes great, but then you essentially exhaust yourself and slip back into your old ways - and you give up. There you are, berating yourself because you didn't keep up with this huge (and frankly, unrealistic) task and you're kind of like,"Well, I may as well give up. Aw, man! I don't want to start all over again. I'm going to lie on my couch on watch Netflix for the rest of my life."

When I'm at this point, I remind myself that this isn't the end of a failed endeavor - this is part of the process. It's not always going to look perfect. There will be times when I cycle out of my routines and times when I cycle back in. Those times will get fewer and far between as life goes on, and it's important to look at what I've actually accomplished instead of how much there is left to do.

2. Anxiety brain likes to fuck with you.

Almost everyone I know has some sort of issue with anxiety and/or depression. I spend a lot of time sitting around thinking, and sometimes that's not always good. I'm learning to recognize anxiety brain vs. real brain. This is what that looks like, to me:

Real brain: Hmmm. The project that I'm dreading the most is cleaning out under the kitchen sink.

Anxiety brain: LOL That's gonna be SO GROSS, yo! Probably it'll take you like three hours. You got that kinda time?

Real brain: What? It's not that bad. The cupboard just needs wiping down, and then I just have to figure out what I want to keep under there. I already have the bins for a basket system.

Anxiety brain: HAHAHAHA you dumb bitch, how come you can't just keep your shit together like everyone else? You should probably just go back to bed, you're never gonna be good at this bullshit anyway.

SERIOUSLY, THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE! It's like having some terrible friend with you all the time that just wants to fuck up your shit. 

3. It's important to celebrate small successes ALL THE TIME!

The trick to motivating yourself is to make time to celebrate your successes, even if they're just little ones. This week, my small success I'm celebrating is that I've done both my morning and evening routines every day for five days now. The week before, I only did my full evening routine once, and the only part of my morning routine I did was make coffee. 

The more small successes you see, the more you want tomorrow. And it keeps you going - pretty easy!

4. It's important to stay challenged.

The most challenging thing for me in life is health. I hate being healthy - specifically, exercise. I know I'm supposed to do it so I don't drop dead of a heart attack at age 40, but OH MY GOD SWEATING EW NO. I decided to try Zumba, which is my sister's favourite activity. My sister hates exercise as much as I do, so if she can do this regularly for two years now and still enjoy it, I'm willing to try it.

And I have to do SOMETHING, because I'm getting older, my joints are starting to get creaky and I notice that I'm out of breath after climbing one flight of stairs. That's scary! And, you know - part of the bargain when you're an equal partner in a relationship is that you do what you can to keep yourself healthy and living for your other half. So for Stephen's sake and the sake of my family who, for some reason, enjoy my existence, I embark on Project Fitness. I'm trying to do 30 minutes of Zumba every day for 30 days, at the end of which I'm hoping that it'll be so integrated into my routine that I won't even think about it.

 Post-workout. I am so fucking sweaty that I fogged up the camera on my phone just by holding it.

I'm on Day 6. And a funny thing is happening! It's giving me ENERGY for other stuff. I'm sleeping through the night! My neck and back aren't sore every day! My quads are sore, but apparently that goes away. And like, this is HARD. But it's so hard that I'm interested and fascinated by all the other things that get affected. 30 minutes of exercise every day and I feel really good because it's this huge, difficult thing for me to get into and keep up with.

All of this isn't rocket science, I know. Everyone already knows these things. It's just stuff that I'm starting to understand the importance of, because I'm living it instead of thinking about it.

Shut Up And Take My Money, Erin Condren.

I have lost my mind and fallen into the life of a Planner Person. It can't be a good thing to buy into the consumerism of my own need to control everything. 

You know that feeling you get when you discover something new and there's so much to learn and you're really into it? That's how I am about planners right now. I DID NOT KNOW THAT PLANNERS AND AGENDAS HAD SUCH A FOLLOWING. If there's anything I am forever grateful to the internet for, it's for showing me that for every weird thing I'm into, there's a whole bunch of people who are also into it, and they don't fuck around.

When I was in high school, we got agendas every year and I'd have the best fucking time putting in all my classes and assignments. I didn't care so much about attending class or doing the assignments, but by god, I knew when that fucking project was due and I knew just when to start panicking about not having done it. The kids in my high school decorated their planners and  used them as scrapbooks - I thought this was particular to my school, but apparently this is a global phenomenon. Using Your Planner As A Chronicle Of Your Life.

 Colour-coding: the Foreplay of the Planner Community

Mine contained concert tickets, programs, song lyrics, pictures cut out of magazines (in grade 10, it was all about Drew Barrymore from YM magazine. By Grade 12, it was any photos of Trent Reznor I could get my hands on from NME), cartoons and some exceptionally bad poetry. I kept using a planner after high school, because I always needed a way to keep track of my shifts at work and my spending, but I didn't realize that decorating or colour-coding my agenda wasn't specific to me until I watched a YouTube video where a girl talked for twenty minutes about how she organizes her planner. About then is when I figured out that other people are also crazy about planners and agendas, and I'm clearly not the only one who decorates hers.

Enter the Rolls-Royce of agendas: The Erin Condren Life Planner.

 Stephen downloaded a Hallelujah chorus app onto his phone so he could play it when I opened up the box. I forgot to mention that this was his anniversary gift to me this year. My gift to him was a special Lego set. This is what happens when two nerds find each other.

Erin Condren is this woman who made agendas into her goddamn career. White people, man. They're fucking amazing. If you go to her website, you can see why these things are such a big fucking deal, but if you're a lazy asshole, here are the basics:

1. You can customize the cover and pretty much everything else about the planner.
2. It was obviously designed by someone who has spent an unholy amount of time thinking about this shit.
3. If you get a friend all worked up about these things, they can use your referral code for $10 off their first purchase, and then you get a $10 credit when they buy stuff. YAS.

So I received my new planner last week, and I've been unable to talk about or think about anything else since. Below is the video of my unboxing and first impressions. For those of you on the edges of your seats, I'll have an actual review of the planner and how I'm using mine because SERIOUSLY PEOPLE MAKE VIDEOS ABOUT THESE THINGS. 

Handbag Harmony

Back in my dirt-poor days, when I was just out of school and living on my own, I couldn't afford the $3 for normal Hamburger Helper, so I had go with the $0.97 store brand, which was called Hamburger Harmony. And that's what I think of whenever I hear the word, "harmony".

Anyway, so this is all about how I organize my handbag.

Hand for scale, because you know that's some important shit right there.

I carry more shit in my bag than anyone else I know. I don't even know what to tell people when they ask me what I carry around in my bag - I feel like it IS just the essentials, so I don't understand how I always have to have this giant handbag thing. Anyway, the bag I'm using now is about as small as they get. There's still no room for my lunch if I'm bringing this to work, so I usually only use this one for non-work stuff.

I bought this in the Las Vegas airport, which I'm sure you can tell just by looking at it. I couldn't decide if it was tacky or badass or both, and $50 seemed like a good idea at the time for it. I have this thing where I think I'm going to be one of those zazzy old ladies who have blingy bags and wear a lot of leopard print and put on really vibrant eyeshadow. This bag was an exercise in preparation for that.

 Everything fits perfectly in here.

Inside, there are a lot of other little bags. This is ESSENTIAL for handbag organization (HANDBAG HARMONY, if you will. See what I did there?). You can also get purse organizers, which are those things with flat bottoms and many pockets that fit inside your bag, so that when you change bags, you just have to take out the inner organizer and move it from bag to bag. Whomever came up with that is a frigging genius, let me tell you.

Once you have your purse organizer or your many little bags, you're all set to start compartmentalizing your whole entire life!

Upper left is my tech and gadget case, upper right is my headphones case, lower left is my makeup bag and lower right is my emergency bandana which I'm never without. It's not always leopard-print, but YOU ALWAYS NEED AN EMERGENCY BANDANA AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT.

The smaller bags can handle all the little things that roll around in the bottom of your purse. Having your loose items contained like this makes it easier to find what you want when you're looking for stuff (if you can remember where you put everything, which admittedly, is kind of hard sometimes). 

The contents of my makeup bag. 

 

In My Makeup Bag

 

* My favourite lip primer, MAC Prep and Prime Lip ($20 CDN)

* Lipstick, minimum of two. In the picture, they're the little roll in the upper left corner. I de-tube my lipsticks and put them into stackable round containers for easier storage. (Stephen gets these for me from a place called Lee Valley. They come in stacks of 6 and I think he pays something like $2 CDN for each stack)

* A lip liner that matches whatever lipstick I'm carrying 

* A lip gloss that matches whatever lipstick I'm carrying

* My Tweezerman travel size tweezers ($16 CDN)

* My lip pencil sharpener (the green thing. It was $12.50)

*  An invisible lip liner (I use the cheap one from Maybelline, I got it for $5 from the drugstore and I find it more effective and longer-lasting than the Makeup For Ever or Urban Decay ones)

* A lash comb with metal teeth, essential for separating lashes after mascara. The one I use is from ULTA, it was $6 USD.

*  Nail clippers because when you forget to put on your cuticle balm at night, your whole life is one big hangnail.

 

 I think this clear bag came from Sephora with some samples inside as a Gift with Purchase.

 

 

 

In My Tech/Gadget Bag

 

* My portable charger for my phone ($20 CDN from Future Shop)

* A USB drive ($30 CDN which was steep, but I really wanted Spock. You can get non-Spock ones for like, $10)

* A purse hook (these things are genius, you can get them for like $5 on Amazon)

My agenda and my Kindle

 

 

There's a cat lying in the corner. If you lie very still, she may just sniff you and leave you alone.

My Essentials Bag

* My glasses, a contact lens case and lens solution (I wear contacts, shit gets in my eyes, sometimes a bitch has to take out that shit and start again)

* Travel-size sunblock, because you're supposed to REAPPLY EVERY TWO HOURS (I just keep refilling the bottle, but the Hawaiian Tropic sheer touch is actually my favourite)

* My wallet (I don't remember where I bought this coffin-shaped one. Hot Topic, maybe? It wasn't more than $10)

* Hand lotion

* A flashlight (mine is a Sonic Screwdriver, which was $14 CDN, but any flashlight will do. Women should always have flashlights in their purses)

* My Uzi Tactical Pen ($28 CDN and the closest thing to a weapon I will ever be allowed to carry. First, you always need a pen. Second, this one can shatter glass, be used as a defense weapon and it has a hidden universal handcuff key in the top, in case some asshole abducts me)

* Advil, Tums (which are in the blue plaid round case), Kleenex, extra napkins (trust me, you need napkins. The McDonald's ones are my favourites for lipstick-blotting)

* Lip brushes (I put the free ones you get with OCC Lip Tars into that round Blinc mascara case you see at the bottom, beside the Kleenex pack. I need small lip brushes for my de-tubed lipsticks)

* Emergency makeup! I always carry mascara, a red lipstick, a red lip liner and a nude and red lip gloss. I do this because I forget my makeup bag sitting on top of my vanity almost once a week, and then I have no lip stuff.

* Dior Lip Glow lip balm ($35 CDN)

* Mascara, because I tend to not have enough time to put on mascara before I leave the house in the morning, and I always wind up applying it on the bus on the way to work.

* Nicole Oil to Go Cuticle balm ($10 CDN)

The Essentials Bag is the stuff that I always need, can't live without. The pouch itself came with the purse, and when it sits in the bag, it acts as a little divider. I have a weird thing where my wallet always needs to be in a pocket or inaccessible to someone just looking down into my bag (I am always convinced that someone is going to reach into my bag and take stuff), so that's why it goes into the pouch. I like the idea of the pouch converting into a clutch if I need it for the evening, but where the fuck am I ever going where I need a little clutch?

I change my bag about once a month, and typically, I go for something a bit bigger than this so I can also fit my work stuff into it. I don't understand people who don't need large bags and who make fun of me for always being prepared, but ask me for hand lotion.They never see the irony.

Zones and Themes

So. Zones.

Don't get me wrong, not everyone needs to do this. Some people can just naturally keep their home shining and neat without even trying. I am not one of those people. Thus, zones and theme days.

One In/One Out

I just came back from a week-long shopping trip that I take with my parents and my sister each year. It's essentially family fun time, with mall pretzels. When I came home with all my loot, I decided to follow the One In/One Out rule. This is much less dirty than it sounds.

For every piece I unpacked and put away, I donated or tossed one piece that I already had. In some cases, I found more things to donate than what I bought - I just looked at my stuff objectively and removed anything that I hadn't reached for in more than six months. I reorganized my dresser drawers at the same time!

Shoes were particularly difficult. I have these adorable skull-print mary janes that I've only worn once, and while I didn't enjoy wearing them (they're creepers, so they have these chunky soles that don't bend and they don't really accommodate the way that I walk), I felt like I wasn't ready to give them away. I put them in the donate box after much hemming and hawing and the ultimate deciding factor was that I didn't want to be someone who's holding onto shoes just to keep someone else from enjoying them.

Project Agenda, 2014

So I made and customized my own agenda. I'm pretty jazzed about it.

A terrible video of my organizational system. Hope you like cats, motherfucker.

The Stuff!

* Notebook from Indigo ($10)
* Removable and Reusable tabs from Girl of All Work ($5)
* Social Envelopes from Wal-Mart ($3)
* Stickers from FlyLady.net ($6)

Routines

 TOO. MANY. THINGS.

Y'all, being a grownup is TOTALLY HARD! There is always shit to do, and it's all necessary. Make your bed! Feed the cats! Get ready to go to work! Do your taxes! Renew your passport! Make a doctor's appointment! Floss! Clean the bathroom! It is exhausting and decidedly NOT FUN. And if you're like me, these things won't just happen naturally, you kind of have to make it so.

Routines help with this.

Inspired by the FlyLady's morning and evening routines, I made morning and evening routines for myself when I started this whole project. What things definitely need to happen right when I wake up? What things need to happen when I get home from work? It's different for everyone, but once I established what tasks needed to be complete every day, and how to work daily house maintenance into those, I found that I could get it all done within fifteen minutes and still have time to work on whatever organizational or life projects I was into.

I also found that not following my routines actually contributes to me having a bad day. If I leave my house in a rush without eating breakfast or drinking my water, or having time to check my agenda, I find myself grumpy and impatient for the ENTIRE DAY. Inevitably, if I don't make time to get myself together in the mornings, I get all kafuffled and I'm off-balance. That sucks.

My morning and evening routines, of course laminated so I can check off stuff.

My Morning Routine

All of this needs to happen between the time I wake up and the time I leave the house.

1. Drink two glasses of water - you need 8-10 glasses of water every day! That's two litres. Having two glasses of water, one right after the other, right when you first wake up, immediately wakes up your body and hydrates you after spending the last (hopefully) eight hours zonked out sleeping. It also makes you poop almost immediately, which is important! You don't want to start your day all plugged up!

2. Fill cats' water dishes - you're not the only one who needs water every day. Fresh water for your pets is important!

3. Eat breakfast - Bitches love french toast.

4. Get ready - Self explanatory. Whatever that means to you - put on clothes but no makeup, put on makeup but no clothes, etc - but get ready to face the day and leave your house. This is especially important EVEN IF YOU HAVE NOWHERE TO GO. It makes a difference in your attitude to get dressed every day.

5. Make your bed - the single easiest way to make my bedroom look clean. If you're the type of person who doesn't like to make their bed every day, I'm not judging. But I bought new zebra-print sheets recently, and you can be damn sure I'm making that zebra print bed every morning without fail.

6. Take vitamins - there are some who think vitamins aren't actually absorbed by your bloodstream and that we shouldn't waste money on them. They're probably right.

7. Check agenda - I like to check on my plans for the day. There have been occasions where I've gotten all the way to work without checking my agenda and then realized that I was supposed to stop and pick up treats for my staff on my way in. Checking my agenda helps to eliminate this!

8. Make coffee - I buy coffee when I'm out and about, but when I leave my house, a travel mug of coffee comes with me. Bitches need energy! Also travel mugs eliminate excess waste from paper cups. Go, environment, go!

Stephen (my husband and love of my life) has his own morning routine, which, for him, includes emptying the dishwasher and sweeping the kitchen floor. He usually does this while he feeds the cats. The two most high-maintenance areas of our home are the kitchen and bathroom, and having the daily maintenance of those two rooms be part of our daily routines cuts way down on the time it takes us to clean them up each week. Really, all we have to do for those rooms in our weekly cleaning is mopping the floor.

My Evening Routine

All of this happens between the time I actually get home and the time I go to bed. A lot of my evening routine is designed to make my mornings easier and maintain the bathroom.

1. Remove makeup - Obviously, not everyone will have to do this. For me, if I don't do this right when I get home, and I put it off until it's time to go to bed, then it won't get done. And going to bed with my makeup on is the number one thing that makes my face look like a can of smashed assholes. So I do this as soon as I get home.

2. Wash makeup brushes - okay, this is exclusive only to me. I don't understand how people can use dirty makeup brushes on their faces, over and over. If you leave an eyeshadow brush dirty, it means that any new eyeshadow you apply will always look muddy because you're using a dirty brush. If you use the same foundation brush over and over, your foundation won't apply properly because you're using this stiff, foundation-caked brush to do it. So I clean my brushes every night.

3. Swish and swipe bathroom - another FlyLady original! The Swish and Swipe keeps your bathroom clean and company-ready all the time. You wipe down your sink and counter and then swish the toilet bowl with your toilet brush, and then wipe it down. I use a microfibre cloth on the sink and a disposable Lysol antibacterial wipe for the toilet. This takes me five minutes or less, and means that my toilet and sink are always clean and shiny!

4. Clean mirrors - while I'm at it, I also use some window-cleaner on the bathroom mirrors. Do you know what this means?! It means that since my bathroom gets cleaned every single day, the only thing I do for it during weekly cleaning is the bathroom floor. Same with the kitchen.

5. Evening skincare and shower/bath - some people shower in the morning. I just prefer doing it at night. It makes my morning faster. I also clean the shower every night with my microfibre cloth (you wipe down the walls and tub with it, it takes maybe 90 seconds), and guess what? It's one less thing I have to do during my weekly cleaning.

6. Put out tomorrow's outfit and makeup - deciding what I'm going to wear the night before is the most valuable time-saver for me. Anything where I'm just standing there deciding something slows my mornings WAY down and leaves less time for me to eat breakfast. AND THEN WHERE WILL I BE WITH NO FRENCH TOAST?

7. Get bag, lunch and coffee ready - I stick everything I need for the next day in my bag, make my lunch usually while Stephen is making dinner, and get the coffee machine ready. We have the kind that you can set, so it means that I can set it to start up fifteen minutes before I have to leave the house the next day and not have to stop my makeup routine in the morning to get it ready.

8. Cuticle balm, brush teeth, get to bed 6-8 hours before waking up - I NEVER remember to apply cuticle balm before I go to bed, so I added it to my evening routine. If I don't do this regularly, I get hangnails!

It seems really involved when I look at this altogether, but it's not. Part of my problem before all this happened was that I felt overwhelmed and depressed when I'd think about all there was to do. Establishing daily routines cut that down and helped me to stick to regular, scheduled tasks so I always felt accomplished and calm. Try it out! Don't tell me that the idea of making your own routine index card checklists isn't getting you all excited.

Welcome to the (Shit) Show!

 Basket systems kick so much ass.

ORGANIZING FUCK YEAH!

This is my life/home organization blog! This is where I will write about all of my organizational and life stuff!

I'm Really Lazy

So, a little while ago, I figured out that I have this cleaning problem. As in, I hate it. And who has time for that? There are books to read and delicious caffeinated beverages to drink and fabulous lipsticks to purchase and essentially a hundred thousand other things in life that are way more fun than cleaning. Fuck those blogs that say that cleaning can be fun - no, it isn't.

For me, it's about keeping things clean all the time instead of doing a once-in-a-while, pain-in-the-ass deep clean. Ain't nobody got time for that. Organization is the key part of this, and I'm slowly but surely organizing my cluttered home and life so that I can spend as little time as possible actually cleaning this shit.


I'm Also Cheap

Most of my products for the different projects I have going on are from Dollarama. For larger things, like bins for closet organization and that type of stuff, I usually go to Wal-Mart. I'm assuming that none of us have boocoos of money to throw around, so as much as possible, I'm going to make sure that any products I feature will have prices and where-to-buy (if, in fact, I bought it, which isn't always the case. I have a lot of stuff around my home that I just reclaimed or repurposed).

How I Started This Whole Thing

So, maybe you're like me and you look around one day and you're like, "Whoa! I wish I could just snap my fingers and everything would be instantly cleaned up and reorganized and I could just start fresh! Universe, if you can make this happen, I promise I will keep everything clean from now on." I waited like FIVE WHOLE DAYS and this didn't happen. I was forced to conclude that I'd have to do this myself.

The project section of my agenda.

I started with a massive list (I'm a list person). I wrote down everything I ever wanted to do and didn't edit anything. I figured that it was my goddamn list and I could put in whatever I wanted, from super-basic "clean off the kitchen table" to somewhat complicated "start a balcony garden" (we live in an apartment, not a house). I held back nothing and by the time I was done, my list was like, twelve pages long and I needed a fucking nap.

I felt totally overwhelmed and didn't even know where to begin. I went back to a website that I had discovered years and years ago, when I was trying to get a stain out of my kitchen sink - FlyLady.net. It's a self-help/organizational website run by some really nice ladies including the Fly Lady herself (the name comes from her love of fly-fishing and teaching others to do so). It's really inspiring and there are a lot of ideas and projects on there that I immediately became really excited about and put into practice. One of the most helpful things I took away from the FlyLady are ROUTINES.

 Once I established routines at home, I decided to use the same principle at work. Also, I love laminating things and using dry-erase markers to check off tasks. Don't lie, you love it too.

I struggle with anxiety and find it necessary to have daily routines to keep myself on track. Without them, I feel overwhelmed really fast and then have some issues getting or staying motivated to take care of things. I set out some basic morning-and-evening routines to follow each day, and slowly began reorganizing my life with them.

I eventually expanded to phase two - dividing my home into zones. If each area of my home is a certain zone, I can concentrate on one zone at a time and complete one small project in that zone each week. This way, I'm tackling my giant list (which grows every day, as I think of more and more things I want to do) in little bites, and keeping myself motivated without devoting hours each day to getting it done.

This Is Probably Going to Be a Shit Show

To be clear, here - I am not a professional organizer, and I actually have no idea what I'm doing. I'm probably going to make a lot of mistakes and spend a lot of time re-doing stuff because it doesn't work or I hung a hook upside-down or some other stupid shit. And I'm not trying to teach anyone anything, I'm just someone who likes writing and index cards and Dorothy Parker, and I would like all three of those things to come together.

Organized living, yo. It's gonna be pretty fucking badass, okay?

My closet hangers don't match. That's also pretty badass.