2019 February Goals

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It's been a minute since my last post. I was pretty slammed with classwork and then I got a nasty cold. Afterwards I went to an art festival during the weekend and burnt my face and shoulders to a crisp. I finally have time to write up a post and it's about February goals even though February is almost over. What gives?

Well, this is more of an update on my first goal. On my yearly goals post I mentioned how I was going to be doing monthly goals. If I complete the monthly goal I'll move on to a new goal. If I don't complete the monthly goal I'll continue in the next month.

Can you guess if I completed my first goal?

Ding ding ding! Yep. You in the back. You're right. I did not complete my first goal.... yet. 

My first goal was organizing and decluttering all my stuff. I wrote down steps on how I was going to accomplish this. These are those steps:

1. Clear closet. 

2. Reorganize drawers. 

3. Clean out my purses. 

4. Organize the shelves. 

5. Organize underneath my bed. 

6. Sort through the other closet.

7. Clean up any odds and ends.

At the end of January I was half way through step 2 which is not a great place to be honestly. Classwork and an overabundance of YouTube took up my time. But, I was cool with continuing because the whole point of these monthly goals is to keep pushing myself to improve in whatever I need to improve in. It isn't a surprise that my drawers took a while because one of my biggest problems is simply putting things away so usually before I start organizing my room again I make myself put my clothes away which I like to have just piled on top of my bed. I've actually gotten a lot better than I usually am putting things away because of this so I like how it feels like I'm tricking myself to being an adult human. 

Currently, I am almost done with step 4. Let me tell you... I didn't realize I had so many books. I know it seems obvious looking at all my shelves. I wanted to keep all my books on my two bookshelves and not the upper shelves attached to my walls. I also wanted everything to be aesthetically pleasing but I have to double book some of my shelves. This worries me because I want to move out. I'm getting rid of at least 30 books (my mom has decided she wants to sell them instead of donate and all I can say is good luck) but I'm clearly keeping too much. I have at least 30 books I haven't read which I've just discovered. That ain't great. The thing is I have an attachment to these books and it seems a waste to get rid of some of them even if I'm not planning to reread them anytime soon. I know. I'm odd. It's not like I'm going to move out this year so as the months go by and I read more books on my shelves hopefully I'll be able to reason with myself only to keep favorites/books I am going to reread often. We will see.

                     

There is another factor I added to this month. A reward. I wanted to reward myself after decluttering and I decided that I wanted to draw ten drawings. Now I've realized giving a number to my reward makes no sense so I've adjusted it to just drawing after decluttering if I want/can. I'm a little bit weird so I like to trick my brain into thinking I'm giving myself a reward but really I was just giving myself another goal. This is how I overwhelm myself... Anywho, I've drawn three things so far. I don't really draw now after I organize since organizing apparently takes hours to do since I'm cleaning all the dust from everywhere while I do it. But when I have drawn it is usually at the end of the day and I didn't realize it was so relaxing. Like I was really into drawing as a kid but at one point I was drawing for other people just because they asked and it killed the drawing vibe so I haven't done it consistently in forever. I've been following steps in Draw-a-Box for fun. I still don't know the different perspectives but whatever I'm relaxed afterwards. And even if I haven't consistently drawn everything after organizing I still have gotten a lot done this month so far.

Something I didn't realize before organizing is there are so many more subsets of organizing than I imagined. For my drawer step I went through two junk drawers, clothes, jewelry (I had so many places I would put jewelry...), lotions, makeup, and just odds and ends. It is so time consuming to organize. It feels never ending. However, I'm almost done with step 4 which has been kind of exhausting to work on. Now I have to go through video games, cds, and deciding where my last few books and things fit on my shelves. I am happy with how everything looks on my shelves it's just my floor that is a complete mess with books I need to donate and ones I still have to put on my shelves but I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Ideally I would like to finish with all the steps in February so I can move on to something else but I would love to just finish step four and almost all of step five. I'm still going to challenge myself to do more so I can work on another goal next month but it's cool either way. As long as I work on something.

If you read through that extremely long post, here's a cookie 🍪. Thanks for going through my whole entire thoughts on organizing so far. I actually love talking about all this because it is something I've always wanted to do. Also, I just noticed another thing my father has moved to a place I don't want it to be (he recently moved a bunch of my stuff) which is killing me inside. I have this thing where I hate people touching my stuff and he and my mom like to constantly do this. Ugh... Anyways, thanks for following along. Hopefully I can update everyone soon with before and after pictures.

There's been the whole Marie Kondo/minimalism craze that has been happening of late. Have you started to organize because of them or are you happy with how your space is looking?