Aidan is back in Ohio. He left early this afternoon. It was hard. It always is. The summer good-bye is always the hardest, though. Because he’s been with me for so long and I’ve gotten so used to him being here. It’s so quiet in the apartment now.

Yesterday, all three of us went to Naperville just to hang out–our last full day of hanging out in the summer of 2012.

He’s like a kid in a…oh.

We had a fun day. I miss that little booger. *sigh* But this year, I did something I’d never gotten the chance to do. I got to buy Aidan all his school supplies and some of his school clothes! Chris and Matt usually do that after Aidan’s in Ohio. Chris did buy most of Aidan’s school clothes, and Matt got him his backpack. But I got to buy all the supplies (I’ll take any excuse to buy office/school supplies) and his lunchbox and socks and stuff like that. Probably kinda silly to get excited over that, but I’m not going to apologize for it.

So, this evening I’ve been sort of relaxing but also trying to sort out all the stuff I need to start focusing on. It’s time for seasonal deep cleaning. The annoying thing about cleaning is that it doesn’t STAY that way after all that hard work. But a dear friend of mine pointed me toward the UFYH tumblr and it has some really great ideas about getting stuff done. Adam wants to reorganize our coat closet area in the front room, which I’m totally in agreement with. I have a LOT of coats and I’d love to see them all contained in a wardrobe that CLOSES. If we can find one big enough. I’d like it to have room to hold shoes and purses as well. I know.

I also need to go through all my clothes and get rid of stuff. Like for real. I have too many clothes and nowhere to put them. It’s time to go HAM on that stuff. The last time I did that was 2008. Basically, here is a rundown of all the work I want to do:

– Declutter my closets. All three of them. Getting rid of clothes, shoes, coats, anything I simply cannot fit or don’t/won’t wear anymore.
– Thorough cleaning of Aidan’s room. Boys are truly disgusting sometimes. I’m not sure WHAT Aidan did in there but man. Adam and I have our work cut out for us.
– Clean up the foyer. The motor oil stain on the carpet out there–we can’t do anything about (don’t even ask but it wasn’t our fault), but there are random boots and shovels and paint cans out there. I’d like to clean it up at least a little bit.
– Organize all my CDs. I have a buttload of CDs and I have to figure out how to get them somewhere easily accessible yet they need to be nicely organized.
-Redo the DVD shelves. They WERE organized, but Aidan and Adam have since ransacked the things looking for certain DVDs and/or video games.
– Unclutter my lotions, soaps, hair products, fragrances, makeup, etc. I have SO MUCH of that stuff and most of it just needs to GTFO.
– Clean out the refrigerator. It’s back to being a hot mess.
– Clean out carb city. Cause there are things there that have been there since 2008 or 2009 (unopened, of course), and y’all, that ain’t kosher.
– Get rid of old magazines and catalogs. I don’t know WHY I am holding on to some of my magazines… I get so many free subscriptions and honestly, the ONLY ONES I ever really read are Reader’s Digest and Yoga Journal (which are not free, go figure), so I need to let all the other subscriptions run out and just keep those two, right? I mean, I LIKE having my bathroom filled with Popular Science (come on, it’s SCIENCE!) and W and the Rachael Ray magazine (they were all free!), but Newsweek is usually outdated by the time I get around to reading it. I don’t even know what else I subscribe to. Oh wait, Fitness or Self or Shape something like that. I don’t need to renew those subscriptions. And catalogs. I keep Free People around for writing inspiration, but I need to just cut out the pictures I like and trash the rest. I don’t want to get rid of my American Girl catalogs but seeing as I have them come to two different addresses, I don’t need to have doubles of all of them, now do I?
– Do something about the HUGE number of books I have. Which will be painful, but is so necessary. We’re completely out of shelf space.
– Clean up my doll display. I still haven’t unboxed my Designer Jasmine and Tiana, and one of my Ellowyne Wilde dolls is hidden behind a baby Tiana doll. Poor Katniss is sitting here like “WTF. You bought me as soon as you could and now I’m just sitting here in the box.” I need to change my Julie out of her summer clothes and into an autumn outfit and maybe I should think about displaying another American Girl doll because I have 12 of them and most of them are in a bin in Aidan’s room.

Me and Julie, when I first got her in 2009.
She was an early birthday present. 🙂

The Katniss Barbie I just got last week.

Some of these need to be done immediately, others (like the CDs and DVDs) are pipe dream projects that will happen when I’m inspired, have time, and really just want to get it DONE. I also feel like some trips to Garden Ridge and/or The Container Store and/or Ikea need to happen for everything to take place like I want it. AND I need to have a plan when I go into those stores. We went to Ikea last week and my mind just goes like this about EVERYTHING whenever I’m there:

And then I get all overwhelmed and I’m just like:

So I really need to have some sort of plan before I hit those stores. It’s cute that Ikea sent me a huge catalog the other day, isn’t it, tho?

Basically, though, for my sanity and just because it’s better, I need to seriously tackle some projects around the house. Get some music on, bust it out, room by room, and be like:

Maybe I can post before/after pictures? Make it kind of a series here? What do you think? I wonder if I could even stick to it, but it would be great accountability….

In other words, I got my yoga teacher training midterm today. Twelve pages, 225 questions, 4.5 credit hours. I have until September 20 to get it done. Trying to coordinate meetings with my other classmates so we can work on it together. I’ve already filled out a few answers that I knew off the top of my head. We’ll see how it goes.

My 2013 Life Planner arrived on Saturday. I think it’s super pretty! 🙂

My 2012 Life Planner has been amazing. I take the thing just about everywhere and I love showing it off to people. It’s worth every dime I paid for it, and I’ve already started filling in my 2013 Life Planner. Lots of yoga teacher training things to populate.

And this guy finally got to come home with me:

Love Beast! 🙂

One thing I really want to do is cut back on my Internet time. I waste away many, many hours on tumblr and Facebook games when I have toys to be played with, books to read, hell, books to WRITE, yoga poses to practice, journals to write in, pictures to take, an exercise bike to use, and of course, there is that list^^ of all the cleaning I need to tackle. But it’s hard because as a freelancer, I am essentially ON CALL and need to be available, at least from 9am-5pm M-F. (Who am I kidding? Like I actually get up at 9am!) And I’m actually really happy with the amount of work I’ve been getting. It’s just the right balance. Enough to keep me quite busy, but it’s not taking over my entire life and stressing me out to the point of tears and wishing I would get sick so I could call off work.

But in the evenings? I really need to unplug. One thing I loved about the movie Juno was that the parents were never on their computers. They were always doing crafts or projects–engaging in hobbies that were not computer/tablet/smartphone related. And even though I suspect that Juno was set in a time when life wasn’t so computer-centered, it’s still nice to see.

OK, this entry is really long. Sorry about that. I guess I had a lot to say.

‘Til next time!