Er...um...hi

I like having a blog, I really do.  When I was living in Hawai'i on my own it was a great way to write down the things I wanted to be sure to remember from my time there and compile some of my photographs of the scenery, flora and fauna.  But as you can see, after I moved to the Washington and reunited with Eamon, the blog just kind of fell by the wayside.  It's kind of hard to believe that nearly two years have gone by since the last time I posted here.  I had a household to unpack, I was instantly caught up in rehearsals for "Fiddler" (which turned out to be just the thing, with Eamon gone on a really long deployment - a large cast is a terrific instant social circle!) and I was job-hunting to boot!  Also, I've managed to use Facebook for a lot of the everyday update type stuff that people tend to blog about, and I never felt the need to document my sewing projects step-by-step (the way lots of costumers keep online "dress diaries") on my blog.  I did post some "in-progress" pictures, but largely I just put the finished items on Facebook and/or my Pinterest page.  But I never just completely shut down the blog, mostly because it never occurred to me, and also because I figured maybe I would eventually want to use it for costuming stuff or whatever.

I won't worry about giving the rundown of the past two years here, because I generally direct people to this blog from Facebook, so anyone with whom I'm already friends there knows about all the big stuff like the birth of my daughter (referred to herein affectionately as "Bug").  Incidentally, she is yet another reason the blog has been silent - I know, I know, some people keep mommy blogs, but I am not one of those people!

HOWEVER!

I think I may have found something to blog, at least for a little while, and then maybe the blog will sink back into oblivion or I'll figure out another use for it.  There's this 40 Bags in 40 Days challenge that a friend posted about on Facebook, and goodness knows I need to declutter!  I guess it's designed to line up with Lent - which I don't observe, since I'm not religious in any way, but I do know Wednesday was the first day, so I'm already behind ;-)  It's okay though because there's a printable sheet for keeping track that doesn't have specific dates on it, so you can start whenever.

Here's a picture of the area I decluttered yesterday (Thursday).  I feel bad because my wonderful friend Diana came to visit in late November of last year so she could meet our little Bug, and one of the things she helped with while she was here was a declutter of this very table.  I had every intention of keeping it clear, and obviously that didn't happen.  But I must set aside guilt and simply dive in, and hope that this time I do a better job of maintaining a tidy surface.

So yeah, pretty messy.  Here's the "after"!

I did it!!  All right, so the things that were hanging off the chairs in the "before" shot are still hanging off the chairs.  Those are all the various baby-carrying contraptions we have collected and used, some more than others - there's a sling, an Ergo, a Moby wrap, and on a chair outside the frame there's even a Snugli (plus my purse and diaper bag, which is now also my purse).  I didn't even factor them into my declutter since it was really the surface of the table that needed clearing, but some of them could probably get stored away for now - most of the time these days when Bug isn't sleeping, we just carry her around or set her in one of her bouncy seats if we need both hands.

The bag on the table is my First Bag, and everything in it went to the recycling bin (yay!).  The other stuff mainly just needed to be given a home, and I think I did a pretty good job of finding places that all of it can live.  Not perfect, but at least we have a dining room table again!    

I haven't done today's declutter yet, and it's already getting on towards bedtime, but there's a suggestion on the challenge website that you can include non-physical spaces in this process, such as e-mail inboxes and computer files.  So, I will do a physical area on the odd days and a digital area on the even days, because I think that will help keep me motivated - changing it up is more appealing to me than looking forward to several days in a row of decluttering actual stuff.  Oh, and it's looking like I'll put up a blog post each day about the previous day's accomplishment ;-)

Stick with me and keep me honest!