Our focus this week has been on TAG:  Time Alone With God.  Before I even heard about Donna’s course, re-establishing a regular quiet time was one of my goals this year.  In the last few years, I’ve spent plenty of bits and pieces of time throughout the day with God, but I never really established a regular time to meet with Him.  Until this week.

This week I made a commitment to spend the first 30 minutes of my day with God for at least the next 90 days. In some ways, it hasn’t been easy.  I’ve been getting up at 4:30 a.m., when my husband leaves for work.  On my way to the spare bedroom, where I spend my time with God, I grab a cup of coffee.

Twice this week I’ve had migraines that make it hard for me to focus.  And yet, by the grace of God, I persevered.  And you know what?  I’m glad.  I found that by giving God the first part of my day helped me to focus on the important things in my day, rather than wasting my time on the insignificant. By starting my day with God, I acknowledge that He has first place in my life, and I remember that throughout the day.  My day begins with a purpose:  to glorify Him.

Yes, I’m tired.  Yes, it’s hard to drag myself out of my warm, cozy bed at 4:30 in the morning.  And yes, at times I’ve not felt well.  But by 5:00 when I’m wrapping up my TAG, it’s completely worth it!

Photo by DrGBB.

So, I’m back.  If you choose to follow me here, I may post erratically.  I have no schedule.  There may not be a lot of rhyme or reason to my posts.  This blog is just me.  My thoughts.  And it’s a place where I write for me.

Don’t ge me wrong.  I would love it if you chose to keep up with me here.  I always appreciate insights from others.  Hashing things out with other people helps me grow, and growth is good. I just want you to be aware that this blog won’t be anything like my other blogs.

To let you know what I’m up to lately, I’ve decided to take part in the 90 Day Jumpstart to a New You challenge on Facebook.  It’s based on the book Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be by Donna Partow.  I just received my book in the mail yesterday, and I’m very excited!  It could get interesting in March, though, when I head to South By Southwest for a week.  But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

One of the things I’d like to do more of this year is scripture memorization. For that reason, I’m posting the scripture I’m working on on the front page of my blog.  Feel free to memorize right along with me.

So that’s where From Under the Clutter is going this year.  May it be a year of intense spiritual growth.

Photo by audreyjm529.

With that being said, I’m putting this blog on hold….sort of.  Being Frugal.net is growing at such a rapid pace that it’s monopolizing my blogging time.  Not that I’m complaining.  I’m having a great deal of fun running that blog.  But I can’t devote the same amount of attention here.

I’m also knee deep in my declutter project, and that’s going to be taking up a lot of time for the foreseeable future, too.  I do want to keep a written record of my declutter project, though, because I never want to be tempted to have too much clutter in my house again.

So this blog is going to become my journal for my home declutter project.  You’re welcome to pop in to see how it’s coming along, and I promise to post lots of before and after pictures.  I’m just not sure at this point how regularly I’ll be updating.

So to all of my friends and wonderful readers, thank you for hanging in there with me.  And again, if you want to stick around for my house project updates, I’d love to hear from you.  I’m not taking any of your feeds out of my reader, so I’ll still be around.  And of course, you can still find me over at Being Frugal.net every day!

I remember that Monday nights were a huge deal in my family growing up. It was the night we all sat down together to watch Little House. The stories were compelling, and the lessons to be learned were practical.

7th Heaven was much the same in the early years. (It got a little soap opera-esque in the later years) My husband and I watched from the beginning, before we had any children. We had a standing Monday night date. We didn’t have a lot of money for junk food, so I’d make a bowl of pudding every Monday, and we’d watch 7th Heaven while eating pudding.

And Life Goes On. You just had to love Corky. I loved the way that show taught the world about people with Down Syndrome. An everyday family living life. There was nothing outrageous about the family. They just dealt with real life situations every week.

Are there any shows out there these days that a family with young children can watch together? I’m certainly not going to let my children watch Desperate Housewives. We like American Idol, but even then I have to preview the guest artists to make sure they’re not singing anything raunchy. I learned that the hard way when they had a couple of singers (I don’t even know who they are) singing “Hips Don’t Lie”. Yeah, the song is about exactly what it sounds like.

Call me sentimental. Call me uptight about my standards. I just miss the old days of good television.

Photo by aussiegall.

Oh, you want to know what I posted about?  Spending time with your children!

Now I just have to get the homeless toys out of my living room!

One of my biggest issues was my collection of books.  I had way too many books on a cheap bookshelf that I got from Walmart several years back.  That cheap bookshelf broke a couple of years ago, but we kept piling on the books.

After getting rid of 3/4 of my books, I decided to put the remaining books in my living room, so I’d have a reading area.  I stopped by Target on Thursday, and they had the exact type of bookshelves I was looking for on sale!  I bought two and rearranged my books and photo albums.  Here’s the finished product.

Much neater, don’t you think?  Ignore the clutter off to the side.  I’m in the process of going through that and finding a new home for it.  Eventually I want to put a comfortable chair and a lamp where the clutter is, so I have a nice reading area.

I also need to continue to work with the new shelves.  It turns out our floor is really uneven in the space where I put the shelves, so they’re not lining up exactly right.  Right now it’s pretty close, but not perfect.

I’ll continue to post updates.  So far I have to tell you, I’m loving the changes we’ve made!

Since I haven’t been posting, I thought I’d show you what I did yesterday. After being inspired by Oprah’s show with Peter Walsh last week, I picked up a copy of Peter’s book It’s All Too Much. Talk about inspiring. I can’t stop reading. And then yesterday I took action.

One of my goals for this year was to rid my house of everything but what was useful and what I loved. Peter’s book provides a road map for getting that done. I’m one who has an easy time coming up with goals and ideas, but a hard time translating ideas into action. That’s what the book does, so it’s perfect for me.

Yesterday I began the process of tackling my bedroom. My bedroom has always been a mess. It’s not because I’m messy, but we live in a three bedroom house, with a total of 5 closets. We have no garage or any type of outdoor storage, so everything needs to fit in the 5 closets. My bedroom started to become the catch-all room for anything that didn’t fit anywhere else. We just had way too much stuff in there.

Peter says, “No way!” He stresses that the master bedroom should be for sleeping, romance, and getting dressed. That’s it. If it doesn’t have to do with sleeping, clothing, or romantic ambiance, it shouldn’t be in the room. I did my best, but I made a couple of modifications. The TV stayed, as well as my husband’s guitars and amp.

I moved the books, the crafts, the mailing supplies, the gift wrap, and much other miscellaneous junk OUT. Are you ready for the pictures?

The before pictures were actually taken about a year ago. But the amount of clutter was the same then as it was yesterday morning.

Before

After

Stuff to go to Goodwill (mostly books)

And for good measure, the other thing I did over the last few days was accompany Liz to get her ears pierced. That’s what she wanted for her 10th birthday, so that’s what we did. Here’s her new earrings. She’s so excited about them.

So now that you all know how busy I’ve been, hopefully you’ll forgive me for not being around much.

Photo by sh0dan.