So, it's a little obvious that I'm TERRIBLE at keeping up with my blog. But yet I can check Facebook 12 times a day. Something could be wrong with me. I'm at a point in life (I've been at plenty a time before) where I feel like I want things to change PERMANENTLY for the BETTER. I've been thinking about things that worked in the past, that for some reason (mostly laziness) I've gotten away from. One of the things that used to help A LOT was posting my "to do" list online at mommysavers.com. The forum is full of other mommies doing the same thing as me, so we could keep each other accountable to get done what we needed to do for the day. It was great, though I didn't realize HOW great until after I stopped doing it. You know, the whole "hindsight" thing. Anyway, I want to do that again. My house has gotten away from me, and at just shy of 27 weeks pregnant I'm racing against the clock to gain control over something that will be an added pressure once the baby has arrived. I have posted my daily do list on the mommy board, but I'll post it here as well:

1. switch dishwasher
2. laundry (unending pile it seems!)
3. clean clutter off table & counters
4. change lightbulbs in DS's bedroom and closet
5. change furnace filter
6. put away clean laundry
7. put out solar spotlights
8. wash down front door/doorway
9. dust
10. wash down bathtub
11. mop kitchen floor
12. mop bathroom floor
13. vacuum
14. mix sugar cookie dough
15. make spice cake & brownies (for truffles)
16. figure out what's for dinner

 Also, I have started to declutter the house. I have a BEFORE BABY PROJECT LIST already - and a lot of the things on that list involve decluttering. At times I've found myself frustrated because Hubby and Little Man don't get things on their own - they are often asking me to get things for them. I realized that by everything having a home -- and things going back to their home after use -- my boys will become more independent and get things on their own (and put them back where they belong). It won't be an immediate thing, but I'm tired of having to do everything because I'm not fostering a clean, uncluttered home. So, I'm working on it. I've bought shelving units to store Little Man's toys and also one for our bedroom (for my crafting stuff, etc) and I've found it to be so much easier to know "it's on the shelf" even if I have to search for it for a couple minutes. My most recent change was to turn the living room closet into a storage closet/pantry. They now know that the towels are in there, as well as any extra bottles of juice or napkins we have on hand. It's working, slowly but surely. We're getting there. Now, I think I'm going to start noticing the things that are continuing to give me troubles and try to find solutions for them (which I might have to keep finding until I find one that really works for me). Hooray for the internet!

Here's the first one: plastic grocery bags. How I loathe them. I really would like to go to cloth ones (or even ones made out of fused plastic bags!) but I haven't made them yet. And until I am exclusively using them, I have to find a solution for the gobs of plastic ones that make it into my house. So, here's my first CLUTTER-BUSTER SOLUTION.

FOLDING PLASTIC BAGS NEATLY

This awesome little solution takes a crumpled (or tied) grocery bag and shrinks it to about the size of a matchbook. I'm figuring the same technique can be used with cloth grocery sacks as well. I imagine an empty kleenex box would hold dozens of these folded gems!

Next up --- finding a cleaning solution that WORKS to replace the dozen-or-so bottles/cans of random cleaners under my kitchen & bathroom sinks.