Rant alert!

I think this post will be more of a rant than an informative post about organisation. I apologize in advance if this does not interest you all.

I HATE CLEANING, it's so boring, like extremely boring but I LOVE the end result. The feeling I get knowing my house is clean and tidy is one of pride which makes me want to invite people over to socialize at our home.

Another obstacle I've come across is my roomy and boyfriend. He is just as messy as me and leaves things around everywhere. I think in the time I have started this project I have argued with him a million times about not washing the dishes, not rinsing the shower, not cleaning up after himself etc. I'm now convinced that he loves to get me riled up and is doing these things just to irritate me. His one and only chore is to wash up after meals. He leaves the dishes sitting for hours before he does them and lets them "air dry".

I suppose my rant today is really about me needing to persuade him to get on board with the cleaning routine and share with him my feelings about the whole situation.

I now declare this rant OVER!!

Again I apologize about this short uninformative post and the contents aren't too great either but I wanted to share my feelings on the whole experience.

Some home truths about weight and exercise.

I have always been a walker, I remember when I was in secondary school (high school), an old friend and I would walk around our town in the evenings after school. The town I live in did not have much entertainment for teenage girls so we had to resort to walking around the town for hours. To say we were fit is an understatement, also twice a week we went ballet & hip hop dancing, as you can imagine we had great legs. A year after school finished I got a boyfriend with a car so the walking kinda stopped. 

Fast forward 9 years I still have that same boyfriend and the walking is at a bare minimum. The sad part is I've put on about 30lbs since I was 18, I have a poor diet and don't exercise. We have an Irish Red Setter and he is now overweight for her breed, we have a serious issue on our hands.

As it is summer in Ireland I can now start walking again, for the past 2 mornings I have been getting up at 9.30am (which in itself is amazing as I usually get up at 11am-12pm) and heading for a walk by 10am. Once I'm out there I feel great as I'm exercising my legs and getting lots of fresh air (just ignore the fumes from cars) I feel good about myself when I arrive home.

Currently I go 2.7km in 24 minutes so for the rest of this week I'll keep this route and get faster as the days go by. Next week I will change routes, each week I plan to increase the distance. I really hope I can keep this up as I need it. If I calculate my BMI I am in the obese category, if you have a BMI over 30 (mine is 31.6) your risk of weight related diseases such as type 2 diabetes & heart disease increase. I also have a medical condition called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome which increases your chance of developing diabetes so I really need to give myself a good kick in the bum and get moving.

If you would like to check your BMI just use this link. http://www.safefood.eu/Healthy-Eating/Weight-Loss/BMI-calculator.aspx

So with this I leave you until my next post.

Creating a cleaning schedule

So todays post is how to create a cleaning schedule which hopefully I can stick to. 

On researching this subject I came across a lot of layouts on Pinterest and although most were very good they weren't specific enough to what I needed. I also watched YouTube videos on cleaning schedules to get an idea of how other people handle the cleaning routine.

Currently I do a blitz clean, this is to get the whole house cleaned on one day usually a saturday morning. That my friends is the extent of the cleaning schedule in my house. If I was cooking and something spilled or water over boiled chances are we would leave this there until cleaning day. So as you can see we are a little bit slobby, I can't even imagine what it would be like if we had kids, I think the house would be a tip.

I have outlined the steps I have taken to make a cleaning routine that satisfied my schedule while spreading the chores out over the week. 

Check out this video from the Tidy Things Ireland YouTube channel which I made earlier, it runs through the below outlined steps as well. (www.youtube.com/tidythingsireland)

• Making a list of all cleaning to be done.

Do exactly as it says above, make a list of all the cleaning you can think of around your house. I thought of the following items and put them on a spreadsheet as pictured below. Once you have listed all the cleaning that needs to be done, have a look at the layout sheets from my Pinterest board to see if you have missed any for your own home. (http://www.pinterest.com/tidythingsirl/cleaning-schedules/)

• Split the list into categories

Next you need to define whether the chore is a daily, weekly, monthly etc task. Once this is complete sort the list so you have it grouped by how ofter it needs to be completed (column b).

• Create the schedule into a word document

To add more structure and as a better visual aid it is best to move the schedule to a word or pdf document. Please see the above video for the completed schedule and instruction on this.

To download this schedule please click on the Cleaning Schedule Download tab above (at the top of the page) or by clicking the following link. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6yuPUxjriLVSnR5eDZuYlM5VXM/edit?usp=sharing)

The first day of the rest of my life!

I just wanted to start this blog off by introducing myself and to let you know what this blog will be about.

My name is Karen, I'm 27 and I'm from Ireland.

The purpose to this blog is to share with those reading, my journey from a lazy slob to an organised lady (hopefully).

We have just moved into a rented 2 bed apartment, we don't have much space but we have an awful  lot of belongings. We also have boxes and boxes of belongings stored at my in-laws that also need to find a place in our home if possible.

So above I called myself a lazy slob, to be perfectly honest that's a little harsh but lately I am totally unmotivated, I get up late, watch a lot of TV & YouTube and barely do enough to keep the house reasonably clean.

The reason for my lack of motivation is I have been unemployed for 18 months. In February 2013 thru June 2013 Rob & I travelled throughout Asia and it was the best experience of my life to date. After arriving back in Ireland I searched for a job but unfortunately I have yet to find one so as a results we are living off of Robs salary which is stretched thin every month (rent in Ireland is extremely high). In the past 3 months I find myself emotional, moody and slightly depressed. I hope having more organisation in my daily life will help immensely and I think creating a routine will help improve my mood each day.

This blog will be filled with a lot of to-do lists, pictures/posts of my unorganised life and hopefully pictures/posts of how I organised my life :) If that interests you please keep reading (your comments are also welcome) and following my journey.

My next post will my home tour, this will show you how my home looks before the changes happen.