And we’re off!

Well, we’re not off exactly now.  We’ll be leaving for Mass in the morning after Chris’ exam and our apartment check out.  We’ll take 2 or 3 days to drive up there so it’ll be a few days before I can get back to the internet.  I’ll miss you guys!

Decluttering my life

*Let me preface this by saying that I haven’t been writing the past few days because it has been so busy.  I shouldn’t even be writing now, I should be mopping floors.  But I didn’t want everyone to think that I made a blog and then abandoned it.  So here I am.

 

We all have clutter in our lives somewhere.  Some people (my husband for example) aren’t bothered by it.  He can live in a mess and not care.  I find that mess and clutter affect not just my mood but my ability to concentrate.  Clutter in my house translates to clutter in my brain.  When I clean the house I can’t just do what needs to be done.  I make a list and then try to stick to it, but it never works.  I run around from room to room putting things where they belong and half doing all of the chores on the list.  My brain is so garbled that halfway through doing the dishes I remember that the clothes need to go in the dryer and I have to pay the bills and the dog needs to go out and oh yea I have to make her vet appt…  Every job gets half done and my house ends up looking worse than when I started.  I tried FlyLady for a cleaning routine and I like it but I find the same thing is still happening.   So I’m doing a major purge of my house.  If we don’t use it, don’t love it, or don’t have a place for it, it’s outta here.  My hope is that with less stuff there will be less to do.  We’ve already taken about 20 bags of stuff to Goodwill and thrown out about 5 or so that weren’t even donatable.  We’re keeping things with sentimental value (pictures, yearbooks, things like that) but everything else is fair game.

Right now our house is mostly empty because the movers came last week and loaded all of our furniture and boxes, so all we have are two chairs, two TV trays with our computers, an inflatable mattress, clothes, towels, and a few dishes.  I know this will sound weird, but I am loving it.  There isn’t as much to clean because we’re living in a much smaller space.  Dishes can’t get piled up because we only have a couple.  There’s nothing do dust because we have no furniture.  It’s great.  I wouldn’t want to live like this all of the time, but it’s shown me how nice it will be to really declutter and simplify my house and my life.

Yesterday we went through the file cabinet.  I am so bad at keeping up with paperwork, bills, etc that I just pile it all into the cabinet or bags and forget about it.  It is not a very good way to pay the bills.  All month long I have “rent, car payment, student loan, don’t forget the credit card, oh and…” running through the back of my mind.  Papers pile up on my desk and I can never find what I’m looking for.  So I decided it’s time to purge.  Can you believe that I had bank statements from my freshman year of college in there?  How would that ever be useful?  It took all day but we organized all of the paperwork, decided what was important, and got rid of the rest.  Our poor shredder overheated and crapped out three times!  There are four bags of paperwork garbage that has been sitting in my file cabinet for no reason.  Now it’s all consolidated into a pretty blue expandable file that can fit on my desk.  There’s a finite amount of space in there and I’m not going to allow myself to accumulate anymore than can fit in that file.

Here’s a pic to show you how much paperwork we got rid of vs how much we actually need.  Crazy.

A Little Bit About Me

Well, I finally did it.  I have a blog.  And it’s about, you guessed it, a little big of everything.  I want my blog to cover all parts of my life – my experiences as a Navy wife, my struggle with infertility, being a vegetarian, my family, my friends, my dog…  You get the picture.

I imagine that this blog will be read mostly by my friends, but for anyone who doesn’t know me, let me introduce myself.

I am Becky.  I’m 27 years old.  I’m married to my husband Chris and since he’s in the Navy, I’m married to the Navy too.  I’m not really very gung ho about that, I can’t wait until we get out.  I have spent the last four years living in Georgia and I am so happy to be moving to Connecticut in a few days.  I am originally from Massachusetts so I’m very excited to be moving back to New England.  So far our little family consists of me and Chris and our dog, Fenway.  She’s small and yappy and crazy, but she’s our baby.  We very much want to have a human baby and we started trying three years ago, but so far we’ve had no luck.  I have something called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) which is a condition that causes infertility (among other things).  We have a couple treatments we can try once we find a Dr. in Connecticut, but right now we’re mostly focusing our energies on researching adoption.  I’m a vegetarian.  I “went veg” as they say in December 2006 and I haven’t looked back.  Just in case you’re wondering vegetarian means that I don’t eat any meat, poultry, seafood, or anything made with those ingredients.  I do eat dairy and eggs although I try to limit them.  Chris’s diet is pretty much the opposite of mine so you can imagine how interesting dinner is in our house.  But we (mostly) make it work.  I’m also pretty crunchy – organic food, chemical free, natural living type stuff.  Right now we’re in the middle of moving so I don’t have a job to talk about, but I hope to find something nice in CT.  I have spent the last four years as a SAHW (stay at home wife) because of the terrible job opportunities down here and I am bored out of my mind.  My brain needs exercise.  I’m looking into classes in CT.  I never finished my college degree for mechanical engineering and I’d like to go back to get my bachelors, although definitely not in engineering.   I go back and forth, but I’m leaning towards education, maybe elementary or maybe middle/high school math/science.  I’ve played the violin for almost 20 years now but since I have no orchestra or chamber group to play with here I’ve fallen way out of practice.  As for spare time activities, I’m pretty boring.  I like to hang around the house and watch a movie.  I love cooking and trying out new veggie recipes.  I love being outdoors, hiking, camping, bike riding, or just sitting in a chair outside.  I like music, the Red Sox, fall leaves, the color blue…  You get the idea.

So that’s me.  It’s strange to fit your whole life into a little paragraph like that but there it is.  That’s me.