FLY LADY WEEK 4 - Office

Good morning, friends!

I think this is  my favorite week. I'm sure you know by now I'm trying hard to make sense of the office/ studio.

By the time you read this, I will have FINALLY gotten the gift box tub put together and out of the Living Room. I've also taken care of the canning items except for the table holding wide-mouth quarts for a project I'll be talking about on the 26th in the Pantry Prep post. 

I'm only seven days from the next Full Moon. so pitching really isn't my agenda for this week. The best time to purge is between the Full Moon and the New Moon. Get rid of what no longer fits you or that you don't want to grow back (or at least at a slower pace)

With that in mind, this week will be all about organizing what I DO want to keep. I don't need in the sewing corner at the moment so I'm going to move all of my kits to that end of the room so I can get around in here, then stage what I do want to pitch after the 29th when the next Full Moon makes an appearance. 

I have other things I need to do in here that doesn't pertain to cleaning. July is going to be a really busy month so I'm trying to prep what I can  now.

* RoughDraftChallenge to finally get this book pulled together. 30 days of FOCUSED writing

* Ozark Creative Writers short pieces. Deadline is August 31st.

* #JarItUpJuly (I'll be talking about that on the 26th)

* 25 Days of Christmas (cards) on the Creative blog/ Youtube channel

* Pink Christmas journal kit (I've had this kit in a bag for 5 years! Time to get it done. 

I'm trying to work through all of my kits, one journal per month. We'll see how this goes but so far, so good. As I type this on Sunday, I'm hoping to finish one this afternoon. I've had all the elements and the signatures for about three years. I'd intended to finish it at the retreat in April but when I opened things up, I realized I didn't have a cover. Instead, I used what I did have to make MORE elements for the journal. LOL 

If you don't have an office or a craft room, what will you work on this week? With school out for the summer, maybe work with your kids to declutter their room and give them a fresh start for the coming school year.  Please let me know what you'll be working on.

Be safe, Be prepared, Be Blessed!

~ Kelly

FLY LADY WEEK 3 - Bedroom & Bathroom

 Good morning!

I don't know about you but I've had my share of weather, either for me or for family & friends.

I did get the canning stuff moved to the basement. The basement organization is the last week of the month but Bob got motivated to do some rearranging. The good thing is, I now have a place to put the extra jars from up here away. I may be packing meat sales in the freezer for the next couple of months but I'm not doing any canning until later this fall.

I did get the night stand cleared last week. Looks nice, and I have room for the keepsake box Bob got me for Christmas.

This week, I want to focus on getting the roll top desk in order so I can start listing projects again. Get photos off my phone and into the respective holders. Some are for the list journal and others are for the Yearly/ Monthly albums.  I'll worry about my clothes closet next month. I need to try stuff on and think about what I'll need for conference in October. One thing at a time.

The bathroom is in really good shape except for the cabinets. They need a good going through/ purge. If I take one basket of stuff a month, I'll have a fresh start by January... Baby steps.

What do you want to work on this week? Is there a space in one of these rooms you've been putting off tackling? Now is the time. Purging in the span of time between a Full Moon and a New Moon is the best time to help insure none of what you get rid of finds it's way back in some form. We have about 16 days left.

Be safe, Be prepared, Be Blessed!

~ Kelly

FLY LADY WEEK 2 - Living Room & Dinning Room

 Good morning, friends!

A bit wet and dreary here in the Ozarks but that's okay. The plants all need a good soak and I can stay inside.

While there is still a lot to do in the house over all, I have two main focuses this week.

Living Room:

* take the canning stuff back to the basement. I'm done doing any canning until fall. 

* FINALLY get the gift box tub taken care of

Dining Room:

* go through the pile of 'state' flyers/ brochures in prep for finishing the States Junk Journal this year.

* go through more of the cooking magazines. I'll note any recipes I want to try then take the rest to recycling

Sometimes you just need to find a FOCUS point rather than looking at the room as a whole. That's my plan of attack for this week. What's yours?

Be safe, Be prepared, Be Blessed!

~ Kelly

FLY LADY WEEK 1 - Kitchen & Laundry Room

 Good morning!

How can we be entering a new rotation already? Where does the time go?

Well, I can tell you a good portion of my time is spent with Bob. Though over the course of May a lot of my time was canning potatoes and baked beans. As you read this, I'll be processing the last of those #40 of potatoes. I am so ready to be done with those! I'm also putting the pressure canner away until fall. We're going to move into summer temperatures pretty quick and, if you've not experienced pressure canning, the task is a hot job. I don't want to work my AC any more than necessary.

For the most part, I'm done canning though I am planning on some blueberry and strawberry jam. I can put those in the water bath canner and they don't have a long processing time. An early morning task.

Now I can focus on serious cleaning.

I'm hoping for next month to focus on an actual task list that I can share with you. Things to look for in your own home you might not have thought of. For this last month in quarter 2, I just want to spruce things up a bit.

Laundry:

Go through the 3-cubby unit and get rid of anything I no longer need. We have no plans to get another dog so the bath towels, extra bowls, vet back pack, etc. can go! That will free up at least 2 cubbies for bird feed. LOL Yes, we have a wide variety of birds (and squirrels and raccoons) we feed on the front deck. Bob has gone from we aren't going to be able to afford bird feed to, 'let's grab a couple extra bags while they're on sale'. LOL He's so funny. He even researched what squirrel prefer and their visiting habits. He's such a softy. 

So cubby/ wild life food is the priority for that room. I also run the cleaning pod for the washing machine. 

From there it's the weekly run of the rumba and detailing the litter box area.

Kitchen:

I have 2 main areas of interest this week. 

The back area of the corner counter top. I want to declutter, add a lazy susan and possibly a couple of 4th of July/ Patriotic decor pieces.

The other area is my baking island. I already have the Patriotic decor for that space, I just need to clear everything else off so I can bring that in. I have planned to show you what that looks like in a later post.

Getting those areas done this week will be a big win. Can't wait for those two rooms to start looking inviting again.

Are you following this cleaning routine or have you developed your own? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Be safe, Be prepared, Be Blessed!

~ Kelly

FLY LADY WEEK 4 - Office

 Good morning, everyone!

Looks like we get a day or two break in the rain. Saturday, I finally found healthy strawberry plants as well as Marigolds. Who knew those flowers would be so hard to find! I'll be planting my own next year, so that will help. I'm putting the marigolds in the tomato and zucchini tubs. We're going to put the strawberries in a holding pattern in the tower pots until we get the bed built. I need to wait for the 4-th of July firework tents to go up so I can haul a massive amount of cardboard. 

As you read this, the two areas of my bedroom will be done. I still need to take care of the 2'x4' table holding my Christmas paper crafting but not ready to bring it back into the office yet. But I will be able to sit at my roll-top desk and work on planning out the next big personal project - Alchemy180. I'll talk about it more in a later post. 

For this week, I'm back hard on the office. I have multiple areas to work on so I'm taking each area and using my Your Path Forward game board for inspiration. If you want to know more about that, I'll link the video HERE. I need to do an updated video this week that I hope to have posted by Wednesday, so if you are interested in that, please subscribe and click notifications on the linked video. That channel is my author account, Angela Drake. If you like Hallmark quality stories, I think you'll enjoy my books. I need to re-release one I got rights back to and Book 2 of the Eureka Springs series is coming soon.

Let's start with the Ugly Truth of this office. Watch the brief video then you'll understand. I'm being fully transparent here.

I know this looks bad. I'm not a hoarder. I USE my stuff and, most of the time, I can get exactly what I need in the moment. However, I want to be able to sit on my sofa and write or read the current book I need to write a review for. Come into my office, shut the door and just do my thing. 

The main things I need to focus on are:

1 - The filming corner

2 - The space in front of the scrap rack binder shelf

3 - Record videos then put the retreat items away 

4 - Clear the sofa, stacking the kits in front of the work table

5 - Finish 3 Bee journals and get one of them in the mail

6 - Organize the stamps that we moved. Some hadn't been included into the boxes yet.

7 - Put digital kits away

Next month I plan to focus on my Tim Holtz storage area.

Using the Game Board Strategy of Your Path Forward (brain child of YA Fantasy author, Sarra Cannon), I'm just going to pick one area, map it out on the game board then get started. If I can get through at least three areas this week, I'll count it as a win. 

The red bag has been returned to the car. One task down! The rolling craft bag is taken care of. Some items were put back where they belonged. Duplicate items stayed in the retreat bag. I've also cleared the filming table... then put stuff on it again. LOL It's a process!

So, as you can see I've made some progress.

What area are you focusing on this week? What major project could you make progress on using the Your Path Forward game board strategy? I'd love to hear from you.

Be safe, Be prepared, Be Blessed!

~ Kelly

FRIDAY FREEBIE - 25 Free Ways to Cut Your Electric Bill

 Good morning, everyone!

This is the beginning of a regular to semi-regular post. I plan to try for every week but at least twice a week. Stay tuned.

The theme of this post will be whatever comes to mind regarding everything household, prepper pantry, gardening, etc. Usually sharing a trusted YouTuber.

Courtesy of https://pixabay.com/users/geralt-9301/

This week I want to share a video by my favorite homesteading youtuber, Leisa from SuttonsDaze. A year ago, she posted a video about FREE ways to cut your electric bill. Before you watch the video, I understand not all of the items will be feasible for you. But, if you can apply even a percentage of these, I think you'll be less stressed when you look at future statements.

I can say I've tried a couple of these for sure and they WORK! Our electric bill was almost $300 about four months ago. Mind you, we were using our 'back up' electric heat (rather than the wood burner I prefer) and because of that the house wasn't keeping as warm, forcing the heat to run more as well as a space heater for Bob in his mancave and one in my office to compensate for what my Split can't handle when temps got into the teens. We've learned a few things.

One, Bob will spend less time in his mancave and in the main part of the house when it's really cold. The trade off is he can work downstairs more in the summer where it's cooler as opposed to running the AC upstairs as much. As for the split in my office, it's energy efficient but not always able to handle the super cold temps. They just aren't made for that.

Two, I've gone back to hanging clothes on the line whenever possible. Sometimes laundry will wait until I can if weather is severely cold or wet. Clothes will dry mostly in cold temps. A few minutes in the dryer in the evening to top dry them and heat the house a bit is another great trade off.

I understand a lot of you will say you can't hang clothes outside for whatever reason. You Do You. That said, if it's a pollen issue, let them dry outside then bring them in and toss in the dryer with a dryer sheet as you normally wood EXCEPT you only need to run the dryer (possibly even with NO HEAT) or low heat for about 10-15 minutes. You'll be amazed how much you'll save.

I'm also using electric appliances less with most even unplugged (I'll get to that next) Our stove is a gas range and the only thing we run on a 250 propane tank. A fill lasts us between 4-5 years!!

As to unplugging things, we moved as much as we could to power strips. When not in use, I simply turn the strip off. I've done this with my dehydrator, our bed (we have serta system that raises & lowers), the tv in the bedroom (I only use for a couple hours in the evening when I go to bed, as well as the Emeril Multi-oven, the mixer and the toaster in the kitchen. 

Making these small changes have cut our bill in HALF! Mind you, I know we won't be using the back up heat, but we're using the AC as little as we can.

So check out Leisa's video below then see how many of the changes you can make. Also, please subscribe to her channel. She does in-depth research in a lot of things that affect our Pantry Preparedness. You'll be glad you did.

Be safe, Be prepared, be Blessed!

~ Kelly

FLYLADY WEEK 3 - Bedroom & Bath

 Good morning, friends!

Looks like another wet week in the Ozarks. Great time to focus on the inside cleaning.

I do love my naps but I really need to get the bedroom in order. This week I'm going to focus on getting the roll-top desk organized. I have a basket of stuff to use there. I started participating in 'listing' with a content/ product creator called Listing With Layle. Layle walks you through documenting life in a 2-page spread of a traveler's notebook. I love the concept and I played along for a few weeks but I didn't have a place where I could really lock myself away for 4-5 hours journaling & visiting with others. Yes, I have a studio but everything goes on here. When I found that vintage roll-top desk at a yard sale for $40 I knew that would be my journaling spot. Once we got it moved from the warehouse to the bedroom, I never took the time to actually set it up. That will be my main focus for this week. That and clearing off my nightstand. The piece is actually a vintage vanity that has seen better days. The top needs stripped. Not my task. Just to clean it off and declutter the two drawers. 

I'd love to wash the bedding & put it on the line. Sadly, with the forecast I'll have to get an early start one morning so I can put everything through the dryer. Our power bill has dropped considerably since I've stopped using the dryer so much. I'll be posting a video from a YouTuber I follow where she talks about saving on the electric bill. In the mean time, what are you focusing on this week?

Be safe, Be prepared, Be Blessed!

~ Kelly

Those two tasks will do me while I focus on clearing the craft room/ office so I can work in here next week.