Monday 3 September 2012

A very belated update

Well what a busy month August ended up being. You might just have noticed my absence from the blog (then again maybe not!). I am very sorry for not keeping things up to date, but the rest of my life took over. I had a million deadlines at work and some very late nights getting things done. I still haven't finished many things, but life is starting to get a little more under control at least!
I thought I would start September with a mini-roundup of the various challenges I have completed and the ones that I failed at  I am waiting to finish. Ahem.

So here goes:

1. Emails. Well I currently have 118 emails my inbox with about 50 needing my attention. That means that  68 could be filed and they haven't been! Ooops. Still it is far less than it could be. There is a quick fix for this of course, which is to deal with it before it gets even worse.

2. The car challenge. I had set out to collect all my car documents together and keep them neat and tidy. Well this is almost there. Everything is in the car, but I don't like the current setup. I'm on the lookout for a nice small file that will fit the glove compartment (quite a tight space). So until that gets sorted this is on hold. One good bit of news is that the car is now getting cleaned more frequently. I haven't added it to a regular schedule as such, but I have cleaned it more in the last two months than I ever cleaned the last car!

3. Bookmarks and links. My browser now looks well organised, neat and tidy! Fabulous. One item definitely ticked off my list. My only additional plan is to reduce how many blogs are in my RSS feeds. I hate to admit it but I just don't have time to get to them all. I have my favourites and I think it would reduce my stress if I deleted the ones I never refer to from my feeds.

4. The car bin. This is working great! We just came back from a weekend away and it definitely reduced how much rubbish built up. It is small, but perfectly sized for Mr PTC and I. If we had children it would be a different matter, but for now it is perfect!

5. Menu planning. This has been a wonderful resource throughout August. I have changed the format of my original plan slightly to suit our needs. I needed to be more flexible on what we ate, so I didn't stick to the month plan religiously, but we definitely reduced how much we ate out and bought lunch. Towards the end of August i started to include a lunch plan as well which meant I had a prepared shopping list for lunch ingredients which I have never done before. This really helped. I have to admit I haven't started September's plan yet as we only got back from a weekend away last night and I have no idea what we are doing for dinner this evening. I did cave just a little towards the end of August, but it was just so crazy that sometimes pizza was required! The other benefit of menu planning is the list of recipes I am creating including many 30 minute meals, ready and waiting for me to select. This is really useful especially when I want Mr PTC's input into the meals as I just get him to scan down the list.

6. Using store vouchers. This has worked a treat! I now use up all the useful vouchers before they expire. I can't believe I didn't think of this before, it is so simple!

7. Decluttering 31 items in August. I think this has to be classed as a fail. I did make a start and I have been gradually sorting things through, but I haven't made any progress for about 3 weeks! This is going to be continued as I follow a Bowl Full of Lemons organisational challenge throughout the autumn.

8. Decluttering the bathroom. OK, so this wasn't necessarily a challenge in its own right, but it has been quite a major achievement for me. The bathroom is now in a nice, ordered state and I am using up my toiletries rather than buying new ones all the time. I just need to add some labels and the whole thing will be perfect. 

So I think that is the state of play so far. There's quite a lot there, which perhaps explains why I haven't managed to achieve as much as I had hoped. However, I'll keep going!

On another note, in September I will be hopefully participating in A Bowl Full of Lemons organisational challenge. This weeks task is the kitchen, so I will tackle that this coming week. Fingers crossed it goes well.

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Finally, I don't normally share family events, but I just want to share with you all how proud I am of Mr PTC. Last week he finally became Dr PTC after passing his PhD viva. Sorry if you didn't want me to share that with you, but I'm proud as punch!

Please note the coffee-cup graphic above has been adapted from an image on http://clipart-for-free.blogspot.co.uk. This site kindly provides free clipart for anyone to use.

Thanks for stopping by,
Rose
Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

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