One last College (no wait! I graduated!) try at this blog

I have been meaning to return to the land of blogging for some time. Every once in awhile, I dust off the Blogger Dashboard and tap away and entry half-heartedly. Truth be told, I've had very little extra energy the last five years or so, but that has changed! I graduated with my MS in Communication Disorders and I'm now a real Speech Language Pathologist. During those years in graduate school, I also worked full time and was a mama to my two small kiddos (one of whom was born during school!).

So now that that venture (grad school, not mamahood) is over, I want to try my hand at getting this house dominated. And life.I want to dominate that, too. One of my ideas at how to do that is to go through my Pinterest boards and work one project or pin at a time and blog the results that are of any value --whether they worked or not. I'm starting with my Making Time board.  I have long had a love affair with paper planners. Back in my late teens/early 20s, I was obsessed with my Franklin Planner. This is something that I inherited from my dad. I used to love going to the FP store with him and get my new planner inserts....or on a very exciting trip a new binder! Over the years I have used various other planners. This year I have used an Erin Condren Life Planner, which I have really enjoyed using. I love the layout and the colors and the graphics. However, the new planner has a little more streamlined layout, I think because many people decorate their planners. I don't, so I want the color and graphics there. I've been kind of poking around looking at various planners and I think that next year I'll try a Keep It Together planner. However, until January, I'm still in my ECLP, which I love.
I've been pinning Time Management pins for quite some time. So I'm going to work through those and see which I can implement in my life to make some productivity changes.
One of the strategies that I learned from Franklin Planning is to order the priority of things to do A items are very important and need to be done TODAY. Then you order them numerically in order of importance and work down your list. B items should be done if possible, and C's just need to be done at some point.
In the various pins and blogs I have read, I've seen an idea of "Top Three" and I like this idea. Sometimes even with the Franklin strategy, which I like, I can feel overwhelmed. I also want to take this Top Three strategy a little farther. Since maintaining my home in a presentable state is one of my great challenges, I want to think about which Top Three items make me feel best about my home....and also which top three in each room I would need to have done to reduce my stress. So figuring this all out will be one of this week's tasks for me.
I organized my desktop  last summer and I love how it turned out, BUT I had the document areas sorted for work and school and no longer need that. I need to re-do it, and I like this idea of putting the family calendar on it, so I may try that .
In addition, my days need a bit more structure. I want some routines that will help me keep days running smoothly. There are some weekly routines that I do well, like choosing my outfits on Sunday night and hanging them together on a rod in my bathroom so that workday mornings are smooth. I know that I'm the kind of person who will thrive if I find routines that work. Of primary need right now is a routine that gets the house tidy! I'd like to do zone work done in the morning, so that if I have a long day I am not thwarted. I'd also like to have some quiet time to read the Bible and my devotional in the morning. I also like the idea of a Sunday Baskethttp://organize365.com/the-sunday-basket/  to prep the coming week. I like to think of Sunday as a day to "re-set" my life and home and prepare for the week. We try to adhere to a screen free Sunday here and spend time together and in preparation for the week. However, after the kiddos go to bed, I may indulge in following this linky party  for Plan With Me Sunday over at Keeping Up With Mrs. Harris . So this week, I want to think about what I (ideally) would do on Sundays to make the coming week run smoothly.

So this week's goals:
1. Establish TOP THREE for whole house, and for each room.
2. Create a new organized desk top
3.Come up with a daily morning routine which includes quiet time and zone work, and adhere to it.
4. Figure out a Sunday Routine to re-set my week.