Sorta Okay With Holly Kirt

One of my co-workers recently had an eye problem that required a bunch of prescription eye drops. Once she was on the other side of it, she pulled out all the eye drops and other prescription meds from her purse one by one… and eventually counted all the way to 17. She had 17 prescription medicines IN HER PURSE ALONE. It was like the Mary Poppins bag of prescriptions.

When she said I should write about de-crapifying my medicine cabinet, I kinda scoffed for a few reasons. First of all, I’m pretty sure I JUST did that. Also – what kind of prescription medicines would I have anyways?? Then I came home and looked at the disaster that was my medicine “cabinet.”

Ridiculous right? This is actually the cabinet underneath my bathroom sink. Apparently I did NOT just organize it. So it was time to DE-CRAPIFY! This is an easy project that you can do in an hour or less if you stay focused. Here we go:

1. Empty out the whole dang thing.
2. Sort through all your medicines and figure out what is expired and TRASH it. Also take a second to go through any toiletries or other products that are kept in the same place and get rid of everything that you don’t use anymore.
3. While you’re at it, make a list of the medicines that you throw out. Prescription meds don’t need to go on the list, but that expired cough syrup definitely should. Once you have your list, you know what you need to buy to keep your medicine cabinet fully stocked as we head into winter. (The things I ALWAYS have in my medicine supply? Zyrtec, Advil, Sinus meds, DayQuil/NyQuil, Neosporin, Hydrogen Peroxide, and a heck ton of band-aids.)
4. Take a trip to Wal-Mart to replenish your supply of whatever you threw out. (I was shocked to see an expiration date from 2003… the year I graduated high school. Meaning that I moved a bottle of pills no less than SEVEN times before realizing it was expired and I needed to throw it away.)
5. Group like things together and re-stock your cabinet. I like to keep the band-aids and the like together near the front, because hello – I use those suckers all the dang time. The other stuff is in a nice little box (clear so I remember what’s in it) closer to the box of my cabinets… right underneath my hot rollers.

Okay sure, it was only yesterday that I wrote about my great idea to plan ahead where each piece of furniture should go in my bedroom (a la Sheldon Cooper). I moved things around thanks to the furniture sliders until I was too tired to do much else. I went to bed thinking “Yay! I’m so glad that I FINALLY like the way things are in my bedroom!”

Then I woke up. And wasn’t so sure in the daylight.

Then I went to work.

Then I came home. And really wasn’t so sure about the furniture.

So I reached for my iPad to digitally move stuff around… when suddenly… (hold your horses, I’m getting ready to say something out of character…) I realized that sometimes you have to do things the old-fashioned way.

She's getting some water the old-fashioned way... obviously.

So I started moving furniture around. And I moved the desk to one spot. Then I moved it to another spot. Then I swapped the chair and the desk. Then I stubbed my toe on the bed. Then I got so mad I could have spit.

Long story short – none of the furniture is anywhere where I think I want it go. So I think I’ve done more crapifying today than de-crapifying. (I never promised perfection.) So – I decided to just let you know that in the process of de-crapifying, it’s totally okay to have a do-over. In fact, I’ll be doing this room over yet again tomorrow. Lame.

Are you happy with what you have de-crapified? Have you ever had to immediately re-do something you worked on? I certainly have! Share your stories in the comments. (I’m not alone in my furniture placement discontent, am I?)

I don’t know about you guys, but I absolutely LOVE the show Big Bang Theory. Especially since it’s syndicated now and on EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Sheldon is by far my favorite character (And Jim Parsons deserves both Emmys he has won for the role). In case you don’t watch the show, let me tell you how stupid you have been  about Sheldon. He’s a genius but super socially awkward. He’s also VERY particular about just about everything (which explains the extensive roommate agreement he made Leonard sign) especially the furniture arrangement. He has a certain seat in the living room and about a trillion reasons WHY it’s the best seat in the room: “In the winter, that seat is close enough to the radiator to remain warm and yet not so close as to cause perspiration. In the summer, it’s directly in the path of a cross breeze created by opening windows there and there. It faces the television at an angle that is neither direct, thus discouraging conversation, nor so far wide to create a parallax distortion…”

And while I do not have THAT many reasons for the placement of my furniture, I OFTEN think and rethink the arrangement of my house. Every couple of months (sometimes more often that than) I get fed up with a piece of furniture being rendered completely USELESS due to its location. OR I just get bored and move crap around. There are a couple of things that I’ve found that make life easier when I get in the furniture moving mood. I borrowed (several months ago… oops) these doo-hickeys from my mom. (Who, by the way, also rearranges furniture like a crazy person every time my dad goes to Kentucky for a football game… I bet she wants these back now. Sorry, Mom!)

These things make it SO easy to push heavy furniture around the house! As long as you can get them under the legs or base, you don’t even have to empty drawers or cabinets to move dressers or wardrobes. Incredible.

Last week I discovered this amazing app that helps arrange furniture before you even have to break out the furniture sliders! It’s called Living Room and it’s only $4.99! Other floor plan apps cost as much as twenty bucks, but this one is cheap and has some pretty great features. You design your room/floorplan from scratch – so if you know the measurements of your room and your furniture you can very easily set up a virtual playground for furniture arrangement!

I have only used it for my bedroom so far. (I’m pretty set on the current arrangement of my living room/dining room/sunroom nowadays.) After a few minutes with a tape measure and a few minutes entering those measurements, I ended up with this less than impressive arrangement of my bedroom.

Basically, I’ve never found a GREAT way to arrange the furniture in here. But I’ve found LOTS of space on the floor to put stuff crap. So I played around with the arrangement until I found what would be the IDEAL arrangement according to Sheldon Cooper: I can easily access all the furniture and what is stored within each piece, the bed is perfectly in line with the flow of the A/C (yes, the vent seems to only blow air straight at the window… good times), and there’s room for an armchair (currently in pieces scattered throughout my 3 closets) and a desk.

There are only a few problems with this arrangement. Well, one BIG problem – if I put the bed in that spot, it blocks the sliding glass doors. I don’t use them often, but I think I would regret blocking them. So I fiddled around trying to get another arrangement.

And got maybe the most crowded arrangement I could possibly manage. Also – I discovered a feature of the app: color-coding your furniture! Which was good because I have three different pieces (desk, dresser, wardrobe) that take up about the same amount of floor space but are fractionally different. I also learned that I have a WEIRD assortment of colored furniture in here. Anyways, I moved stuff around some more and ended up with an arrangement without the chair:

An arrangement without the desk:

An arrangement without any room to walk around:

And couldn’t shake the IDEAL arrangement that blocked the sliding glass doors. But then I realized that the thing I liked best about that arrangement was the bed sandwiched in between the dresser and the wardrobe. So I tried the same arrangement, but I rotated it!

The bed is up against a new wall (never tried this one!) and it’s in between the teal wardrobe and the white dresser. It appears to fit perfectly with only small gaps between the walls and each piece. Plus it puts the clothes in my dresser (t-shirts, pajamas) closer to the closet and the laundry room.

The wardrobe is a little further away, but it holds extra towels and sheets and off-season clothes so that’s okay.

The black desk is in the corner that gets the most direct air conditioning blast. Which is perfect for blogging. :) (Ask my co-workers, I am always hot.)

Plus I can finally put my chair back together and have a spot to sit in my bedroom. I am determined that this chair will NOT become the place for clothes that need to be re-hung. Instead, it will be a spot to sit and read (when I do not need to be tempted by the television in the living room, or tempted by falling asleep in bed, or tempted by something else when I sit at the table) or maybe work on Financial Peace and budget stuff.

I was so thrilled with this arrangement that I started to move furniture around last night. I didn’t have to move the white dresser (which was great, because even with the furniture sliders, that piece is REALLY old and it scares me to move it around too much by myself). I rotated the bed (and found 4 under bed storage boxes… I am still baffled by their contents – feel a de-crapification coming on anybody?) and moved the wardrobe to the opposite corner. I put together the arm chair and started to put together the desk… but then I found out two things: 1) I have lost the washers and nuts to attach the legs and the replacements I got are the wrong size and 2) this movie was playing on TV:

Distracting. Even though I promised myself to finish moving stuff around during commercials and after the movie was over, I didn’t. Especially because then I found a new movie on a surprising channel… A Walk to Remember was playing on TBN (the Jesus channel… which I do not watch, even though I love Jesus) and even though I haven’t watched that movie since it came out, I got sucked in and watched the whole thing and cried like a baby at the end, just like Nicholas Sparks wants you to. Well. That was an embarrassing over-share. Sorry about that.

So now my bedroom is a wreck. And I still don’t have the right size nuts for my desk legs. But all in all, I’m diggin’ the new arrangement and I’m excited for the direction that this de-crapification is going.

How do you decide where to put your furniture? Do you carefully calculate like Sheldon? Do you move things around until you like them? Do you use an app? However you do it, when you rearrange furniture, be sure to take a moment to dust and wipe down each piece. If you end up with a piece that you can’t find a place for and feel ambivalent about, be BRUTAL and get rid of it! Keep up the good de-crapifying!

PS – I decided at the end of the month to do a video tour of my newly de-crapified place! You’ll get a good idea of the space I’m dealing with and you’ll be massively impressed with my mad skillz of getting rid of crap. (I hope.)

Let me just start off by saying that I do NOT know how I know those lyrics to a rap song. (I googled it and I don’t even think I’ve heard of Youngbloodz…) But I will say that this might be one of the most important days of de-crapification. Money was even the topic of today’s sermon at Johnson Ferry. Before we dive in, let me tell you a little about my financial background.

My dad is a CPA. He’s worked at banks ever since I was young. We were blessed and honestly, I never really had to worry about money. I got a job when I was in high school (working at a dry cleaners) to earn extra money. When I went to college, I worked at a couple different churches (again mostly for extra money) but my dad kept a keen eye on my purchases… which sometimes resulted in this conversation: “Holly, why were you at Wal-Mart at 2 AM on Tuesday morning? And what did you spend $34.16 on?” I was also extremely blessed in that my parents paid for 4 years of school for me… but when I needed that extra victory lap year, I had to take out a student loan. When I started my job at JFBC, suddenly it was like “Oh my gosh! I’m totally rich!”

And I never really took the time to figure out how to budget my money beyond knowing which bills come out of which paycheck. Which leads me to where I am currently… Several months ago, I started wondering if it would be possible for me to buy a house. Answer = Probably. But I need to get COMPLETE control of my finances before I even embark on that venture. Because I would hate to jump into buying a house, realize too late that I have no money, and fail miserably as a homeowner/money manager.

So I tried to do a budget. A real budget, not just random guesses at how much things cost and how much I’m spending. I learned that I spent WAY too much money on food (thanks a lot to the billion restaurants near my house and living with roommates that also ate out a lot). The budget was pretty much a flop, but at least I realized that I shouldn’t eat out as much. A few months later I tried another budget… failed. You see, the thing is that I would spend half an hour going through my bank statements and declaring “I’ll spend $50 on this! I’ll spend $120 on that!” without any real rhyme or reason.

 Then I thought of this guy. (This is Dave Ramsey, just in case you don’t know.) I had heard about Financial Peace University and even knew some people that had gone through it and saved a ton of money and paid off a bunch of debts.

So I looked it up online.

And found that it cost more than 100 dollars to take an online class.

And decided to buy a new pair of TOMS instead. (Which I do not regret, by the way.)

Finally, over the last few weeks I just began to worry about how I would ever pay off my student loan, credit card, and ever save enough to feel like I could buy a house and stop renting. I wouldn’t spend so much time worrying about money as much as I did regretting that I couldn’t afford a house.

Then – two things happened. One – Bank of America announced their $5 Debit Card monthly fee and I started to think of ways that I could use my debit card less (and thought of Dave Ramsey and his cash/envelope system). Two – Sick week happened.

Now I would bet that most of you when you’re sick you don’t want to do much. That’s true for me, until Day 3 of being in bed hits and you’ve cleaned out your Queue on Hulu and your brain actually wants to think about something. So I looked up Financial Peace University again… and it was ON SALE! Before I knew what was happening, I had registered for an online class for $99 and was watching some guy talk about money. (I would have NEVER predicted that someday I would actually PAY MONEY to listen to someone talk about money, finances, debt, budgets, saving, etc. Seriously. NEVER would have predicted it.)

Long story short – I flew through 3 week’s worth of lessons in about 2 and a half days. And let me tell you this – Dave Ramsey knows what he’s talking about. Now, I’m not quite ready to cut up my credit cards, but I am ready to hide them from myself and get out of debt and live off a budget and build up my savings. (Listen to those fancy money words just roll off my tongue like I know what I’m talking about!) There are several more lessons involved in Financial Peace University and I plan to do every single one of them, and I’m mostly following Dave’s rules. (We’re BFF now, so I just call him Dave.) Would you like to de-crapify your finances along with me (and Dave)? Here’s what I would recommend:

1. Take a HARD look at your bank statements from the last several months. Think of the number of times you thought “Where did that paycheck go?!” and track the money down. Get out a calculator or put it on a spreadsheet and figure out how much you are spending on what. Pinpoint your weaknesses and your strengths. (For example, I found that I do not spend as much as I thought on clothing, but also don’t give as much as I thought to the church… yikes.) Start thinking of ways to change: both your lifestyle and your spending.
2. If you can afford it – sign up for Financial Peace University. Seriously. You can take real classes with other people (I know that they sometimes offer it at Johnson Ferry) or you can take it online. If you’re married, you and your spouse have got to do it together. If you’re single, you have got to find somebody else to do it with you or find a buddy to keep you accountable. (I actually am buddies with a girl named Danielle who started the online course around the same time as me. That’s right, if you don’t have a real-life buddy that needs to de-crapify, you can find an online buddy.)
3. One of my favorite things that Dave talks about is spending every dollar on paper before you ever go actually spend a dollar. This is the way that he talks about budgeting. When you make out a budget, write down exactly where you want each dollar to go, or give every dollar a name. This is my favorite part: the order in which you should pay people. For example, the first thing that should come out of your paycheck is your tithe and any other giving. (For me, that’s Maria Decerie, my Compassion child. She’ll be 12 on Christmas Eve!)  After your tithe, next you pay yourself (or SAVE money). The third thing to budget for is what Dave calls the 4 walls: house (and utilities), food, clothing, and transportation. Everything else comes after that. And he recommends literally planning out where each dollar will go.
4. Come to grips with your debt. If you don’t already know, figure out exactly how much you owe and to whom. (Lucky Sallie Mae… I think I bought HER a house!) (PS – Sallie Mae is a student loan program, not an actual person. Just in case you didn’t know.) In my case, I was surprised that my debt was not that bad. I do have a hefty student loan and a credit card balance, but all in all, the number I THOUGHT it would all add up to was WAY BIGGER than the number it actually added up to.
5. Decide to not go further into debt. This is the step where Dave says to cut up your credit cards. At this juncture, I have not cut mine up. But I have stopped carrying mine around. That way when the balance in the checking account is zero, it requires an extra trip to go get the credit card in order to come back and buy something. (And if you know me, you know I hate to make multiple trips and probably won’t buy it.) I have made a resolution (and here I go making it public and therefore harder to fail… or farther to fall, right?) to not pay for anything with credit until my student loan is paid off. You might also need to resolve not to finance any new purchases or open any new store cards. (These are not a problem for me, I have never even thought to do either.)
6. Finally, figure out a plan to stick to your budget. Dave uses a cash/envelope system. If you want to spend $100 on clothes for the month, put $100 in an envelope marked “Clothes” and when the envelope is empty, no more clothes for you. (And no borrowing from other envelopes, either.) I decided on a weekly food allowance and went through the grocery with a calculator. When the 12-pack of Coke Zero in my cart meant that I couldn’t eat out at least once this week, I thought twice and put it back. For me, doing the math in the store helped me weigh the consequences. (Listen to me… doing math?! I keep expecting a pig to fly by my window.) 

Check, check, is this thing on?

Every once in a while, you need to check and see if something’s working. Today it’s time to check and see if your de-crapifying is working! So here are a few questions to ask yourself to see if you’re keeping up! (My answer will be in the parentheses.)

1. Have you actually donated/tossed/given away the giant bags o’ crap we bagged up on Day 1? (Yes! The dumpster is close to my building and there’s a clothing drop-off on the way to work!) 
2. Is your e-mail inbox still empty? AKA are you maintaining the system you put in place? (My home e-mail is empty except for the DING from my phone just now. My work e-mail… not so much. I have a lot of catch-up to do from my sick week.)
3. Is your air still de-crapified? Hopefully you don’t need to change your air filter again (that would be strange) but keep your place smelling nice. (I can really tell the difference with the new air filter. I also just bought a great fall scented candle which totally rocks!) 
4. How’s your hair? If you drastically cut it like I did, are you getting used to a new routine? If not, how can you tweak it over the next few days? (While I LOVE my new haircut, I’m having a problem because it doesn’t do ponytails/braids/buns like it used to… meaning I need to either invest in some of that dry shampoo that’s on TV all the time now, or wash it more often.) 
5. Is your fridge over-run with leftovers or is it still organized? (I have one container of leftovers that I need to empty before it becomes a science experiment, but so far so good. I even made sure to put away all my food correctly today when I got home from the grocery.)
6. Are you following a meal plan? (Yes and no. Sick week = yogurt and popsicles, not much of a meal plan. I did however make a plan for the coming week before I went to the grocery this morning, and last week I pretty much cleaned out my fridge/freezer making sure that I ate what I had already paid for, instead of eating out all the time.) 
7. How’s your car looking? If it’s not so hot, make a plan to keep the crap from piling up in your car. (My car looks AWESOME! Except for the fact that I never got it vacuumed like I planned. Except for that minor detail, I’m doing a great job of emptying the car almost every time I get out of it… but being sick for a week helped me not go very many places. Let’s hope this week I can still be successful.) 
8. How are you coming on deciding where to keep what? Have you had to make any weird decisions or changes? (I’m still struggling with this, mainly due to a furniture placement issue in my bedroom. But we’ll talk more about that later. I’m still rocking the tweezers in my car though. In fact, I used them today!)
9. Is your bed made as you read this? (In a word – no. I’m blaming a lot of things on being sick, but seriously… I was in bed all week. So I haven’t made it. It’s been totally crapified too. In fact, tomorrow I’m planning de-crapify the bed all over again. Sad day.) 
10. Have you helped others with your new de-crapifying skills? (That’s why I’m writing the blog… hello!)
11. Are you taking time to stay well and healthy? I would recommend getting a flu shot if you haven’t already! (I plan to get one just as soon as I feel 100% healthy.)
12. Have you started thinking about the holidays? Even better, have you started a planner or a binder? (I have started thinking about the holidays! In fact, I printed a lot of my binder pages the other day and spent one sick day surfing the internet getting gift ideas!) 
13. Is your dog (or other pet) still clean?! (Maebe… I don’t know what happened. But she smells again. I can’t figure it out. She might get another bath tomorrow, but we’ll see.)

As many of you know, I have a lovely crazy puppy called Maebe Sue. You’ve seen her in last year’s hand-me-down Halloween costume as a hot dog:

Isn’t she presh? This year she got a brand new Halloween costume from Target (seriously my favorite place on the planet) but I’m going to wait before I post those pictures – mainly because her weird body type is making me do some slight alterations on her costume. (Yes, I’m THAT dog mom.) Anyways, we live in a condo and the only time Maebs is outside is when I take her there or occasionally we have playdates at my parents house or with Layla over at the Hutchins. Long story short = Maebs is an indoor dog. Seriously – she likes to be with people… all the people that are within her earshot. She makes crazy sounds when she is separated from people.

But I digress. Since Maebs is an indoor dog, she doesn’t have to have baths very often. This is a great thing because she turns into a cowering fraidy cat whenever the bath is full.

I think Maebs would do this, except her legs are long enough that she just jumps out of the bathtub, no matter how wet she is or how dry I’d like to stay.

Regardless of how little time my dog spends outdoors, eventually she begins to stink (don’t we all) and needs a bath. I try to give her baths before she starts to smell, but sometimes that just isn’t possible. Like today. I’ve been home sick this week and Maebs has spent a lot of time fending for herself when it came to entertainment while I slept. Maebs would check in frequently with a little lick on the elbow or sometimes by standing with her nose in my face until I woke up. This afternoon, she decided it was time to give me a high five. Never mind that I was asleep at the time. After the dream-shattering high five, I realized she needed a bath big time and her nails clipped. So… join me and de-crapify YOUR dog today!

1. I usually start with her nails. If possible, I take her outside to the deck to trim her nails (to avoid having to vacuum up nail clippings). This is usually part wrestling match, part nail clipping, so I make sure that I’m not wearing anything nice. Since it’s been sick week, I was already in sweats and a t-shirt. Perfect. When you trim a dog’s nails, you have to be very mindful of the quick, otherwise your dog will bleed profusely from her toenails. Trust me, this has happened to Maebs before. If you are uncomfortable clipping your dog’s nails yourself, there are a ton of people who will accept your money to do it for you. (Pros and Cons… Shell out some $$ and then you don’t end up having to buy bandages for your dog’s paws.) 
2. Next I’ll brush out all of Maebe’s shedding fur. I use a cheap brush I got at Target. It definitely does the trick.
3. If she’s not stinky, I have some spray-on dog shampoo that I LOVE to use. It keeps Maebs fresh smelling and helps her to shed less. It’s a 2-step dealio. First I spray on this stuff:  It smells really good and after you spray it all over, you have to rub it in really good. Maebs loves this part because she thinks it’s a game. I usually follow with this stuff:  I don’t know if it really works, but I like to think it does. It has the same process: spray all over, rub it in really good.
4. Every once in a while, Maebs stinks too badly and needs a real bath. If I can get away with it (it’s not cold, someone else left a hose attached to the spigot in my neighborhood, and I’m prepared to be soaked), I’ll give her a bath outside. When it’s time for an actual bath (like it was today) I usually fill up the tub before Maebs is anywhere close to the bathroom. She hates the sound the water makes, so she goes crazy if I put her in the tub and then run the water. Also – dogs don’t like not being able to grip the tub, so I let Maebe use my rubber bathmat. You can buy them special for dogs, but there’s no difference between a human bathmat and a dog bathmat, I promise. Then I use some doggy shampoo and lather her up and rinse her off. It’s really not rocket science. I will say that I love this dog shampoo from Target:  It smells nice plus it promises to “Soothe” with its botanical scents. Anyone who has met Maebe knows anything that promises to Soothe her deserves at least one shot.
5. After the bath, I towel her off with one of my college dorm room towels (glad I saved those instead of throwing them out like I originally planned) and we usually go on a walk to help her dry off more. Maebs has crazy thick fur so it takes about a billion years to dry all the way. Today our walk was short because I didn’t feel awesome and it was getting ready to rain. And here she is looking super-precious before we went back inside!  Usually, I’ll use the Don’t Shed On Me spray after she dries off. Today I forgot. I might do it before I go to bed, because shedding is not awesome.
6. Finally, the last thing I do is throw Maebe’s bed into the washing machine. Otherwise, all the stink that you just washed off will go right back onto her fur.

Before you freak out and leave on me, I am not listening to Christmas music as I write this. (Honestly, Modern Family is on… why would I have anything else on?!) Also – I am NOT one of those people who spends the entire year getting ready for the holidays. But I am a BIG fan of getting ready for Christmas before Christmas Eve.

Enter – the Christmas Planner: (this isn’t mine… but close enough)

I only had to dig through 2 Christmas bins to find mine from last year. Yes – this will be my second year to try and get ahead of the game when it comes to Christmas. And I don’t want to brag or anything (except for that I totally do) but I bought all my Christmas presents before Thanksgiving last year and it was AWESOME! But then I didn’t wrap them until the weekend before Christmas. So there’s always room for improvement.

There are about a BILLION different online tools to help you get organized for Christmas (seriously Google “Christmas planner” and see what you get) but the one I like is this one:

This AMAZING tool starts on October 23 and ends on December 3. That means that you finish all your holiday planning the first weekend in December. It’s called Organized Christmas and I hope that you’ll de-crapify YOUR holidays along with me!

Why use this tool instead of any of the billion others? Let me tell you:

• Each week has a theme that helps you get focused.
• There are checklists for each week that help you think ahead and accomplish that week’s theme.
• There are additional printables for menu planning, party outfit planning, and gift giving… not to mention budgets, calendars, and shopping lists.
• Plus, I used it last year and have all my notes in a handy little binder – what worked and what didn’t work, gifts I bought for everybody, the money I spent, everything!