Grateful for All of Our Spring Chaos

The past few weeks have been spring chaos around our house. Don’t worry. There were no fires or life threatening emergencies. Alan was out of town for two weeks. He traveled all over the place and had his own cool adventures, to include meeting a group of Rosie Riveters from World War II and ringing the gong at the European stock exchange, Euronext. But this chaos isn’t about him. It’s about me over here, eighteen years into parenting, still struggling like a fly in a spiderweb. Last week, I was wriggling all over the place. Things kept happening the past […]

Day 25 of the Decluttering Challenge: Foyer

For day twenty-five of our Thirty Day Decluttering Challenge, we are cleaning out our foyer. Do you have a foyer in need of decluttering? It may be a closet or a set of hooks in your foyer that you use the most. Whatever area you tend to use as a launchpad, that is where we are going today. At our house we have this beautiful hall tree that is probably about a hundred years old. It was my great-grandparents’, and I have memories of seeing it in their foyer my entire childhood. When I was a kid, I thought it […]

Day Two of the 30 Day Decluttering Challenge: Storage Room

For day two of the 30 day decluttering challenge, we are in my absolute favorite room to declutter: the storage room! If you don’t have a storage room, focus on whatever room you shove the things you don’t know what to do with or wherever you have boxes of storage. During our past twenty plus years as a military family, we moved houses every one to three years without fail. Many of those homes did not have a proper storage room. We have used garages, attics, guest rooms, carports, and sheds for storage over the years. Here is the video […]

When You Don’t Know if You’re Moving Or Not

There are, unfortunately, times in life when you don’t even know if you are moving or not. It reminds me of a few lines of Dr. Seuss. “I’m sorry to say so, but sadly it’s true, that bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you…” We are indeed in that dreaded place, “the waiting place, for people just waiting.” If you do not know these Dr. Seuss references you must read Oh, the Places You’ll Go! ***When you purchase through Amazon links on my website, I do collect advertising fees. But seriously, at least check that book out at the library.*** […]

Getting My Act Together’s Top 10 Posts of 2022

2022 was the first year for this blog, Getting My Act Together, and these were my most successful posts. I started out 2022 with high hopes of writing every single week, and that went well for January-March or so. Ha! And then the move happened. By move I mean our real life move, not just moving from storiesofourboys.com. Moving in real life was a much bigger inconvenience, you know? It was like, well, so much for “getting my act together” this year… Once the move started, it was fairly impossible to keep up with writing of any kind. Then the […]

37 Tips for Handling Stress (The Stressed Out Series)

Welcome, to my new series on the blog: The Stressed Out Series. If you have been here before, you know the theme of our summer was moving. Actually, the theme of the whole first half of the year was moving. Now we are moving on to the theme of stress management, because as it turns out if the theme of your year is moving, stress is going to come along too. Most of the boxes are unpacked, but I still have not found JD’s clothes, the scale, or my Fitbit charger, just to name a few. School has already begun, […]

How We Unpacked Our Whole House in a Week

Guess where we are. We are on the other side of the move, and we basically unpacked our whole house in a week. Most of it was even finished in three or four days. I don’t remember how long it took me to do it on my own last time, but it was way longer than this. Video One Is the Week Before the Move. This was my July 14th update, and it has a few moving tips. If you do not need moving tips and only have time for one video, skip the first one and watch the second […]