Michaels Haul of Yarn

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. It has been a busy week for me here with work and trying to get organized around the apartment. I am liking my new role at the company that I got transferred to. It is still an adjustment, but what changes in life aren't? I just tell myself that this is the reality as much as I miss my old position and the people, things have to change sometimes even when we feel like we aren't ready.

I bought some yarn recently at Michaels to knit a shawl I just loved the light green yarn and had to buy it and there was a good sale on as well. I bought three balls of the Vanna's Choice Lion Brand yarn in the colorway 'dusty green' to knit a shawl. I am so excited to get started I keep thinking I need to get started on knitting again because I really miss it and it's been too long of a break from knitting and I didn't want a break but sometimes it happens. I still need to buy some circular needles in order to get started that are long enough to knit a shawl.  I also picked up the ball of black yarn by Loops & Threads to knit something for my fiancé Liam. 

Thank you for stopping by! I am looking forward to getting back on track with my knitting again and thank you all for your comments and support even on my non-knitting content posts. I really have enjoyed sharing my journey following the Marie Kondo method to cleaning up my apartment. I am looking forward to tackling the category of Komono next which is miscellaneous items. It is such a large category so I will have to take on this category over many days.

Have a great day!

KonMari Method for Tidying Papers, and Other Updates

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well.  I went through my papers this weekend which is the third stage of the Konmari method to tidying up. I was happy to have today off work for the Victoria Day holiday I used it to finish this process and get ready for the week. There were quite a bit of papers, notebooks, binders, and folders to go through. As Marie Kondo suggests to do, I dumped all of the papers and things onto my living room floor to sort through. I really think this method works so well because you have to put all the papers in one spot to go through and tackle all of them at once instead of tidying each room then having to confront them more than once.

I went from a large pile of papers, notebooks, binders and folders, to a much more manageable pile. I know exactly what I have now. I really like the tip Marie suggests in her book the life-changing magic of tidying up, to only keep papers "currently in use, needed for a limited period of time, or must be kept indefinitely". This made me really question whether or not I really wanted to keep something or if it would just keep on only being clutter and not being useful. I was able to be tougher on myself to get rid of things I no longer need.

Before:

A big pile of unknown papers and notebooks with no proper storage...

Before

To...

After:

Small neat piles of important documents, papers and notebooks that spark joy and everything has a place on a shelf neatly tucked away.

After

I am so happy that I can now fit all of my papers and notebooks onto half of a shelf instead of being crammed into a bin, a big bag, and scattered around. I feel so much lighter already by having only what I need. There are so many documents I tossed that in the past I thought I needed to keep, and now I realize that I do not need them.

One thing I am excited about is that I came up with a storage solution today for my planner stickers. I used the pink folder in the photo above to organize my planner stickers and used clear pocket sheet inserts to place inside. I pulled each sheet of stickers out of the packages and divided the stickers into categories, so it will be easier to find the type of stickers I am looking for. Some categories are: to do, reminder, small stickers, big stickers, holidays and more. It will be much easier to find the stickers I need now.

Next up in the KonMari method to tidying up is the category of Komono/miscellaneous items, which is a very large category. I am excited to throw out or give away more of my stuff. It is amazing once you begin this process how you do start to feel more empowered to throw things away. I might have to go through some yarn or organize it better and maybe give some away I will not use.

Speaking of yarn, I did buy some yarn to start a shawl while at Michaels one day, then found a pattern I liked on Ravelry afterwards and realized I did not have the right needles to start. So I will be getting the needles, then will share my progress soon. Sorry for not posting on knitting in quit awhile, I will be back to knitting shortly! I really miss it.

I finished reading Quiet by Susan Cain. It was such a good book and I really like how she touched on so many topics and areas regarding introverts and spoke of the strengths we have and also difficulties as well. I think it is a great reference for parents who have children who are introverted as well to better understand them and to nurture their strengths. I am still reading A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult and will be focusing my attention on finishing this book now that I will be reading only one. I also just borrowed the audio book What the Most Successful People do on the Weekend by Laura Vanderkam from the library to listen to this week.

Hope you have a great week!

Change Can be a Good Thing

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I have been really busy this past week. I got transferred to another department at my company due to cutting back in the data entry department I was working in. I am now working in administration in another department and my role is supporting insurance agents by entering and verifying their information and also handing their inquiries. This week I was getting trained along with two others and it was a big learning curve, but yesterday I finally feel like it was making more sense. It was an emotional experience being transferred because I really enjoyed my last role in the company and the team I worked with and then I had to adjust to the news of moving and then being in a new role and on a new team the next week. This week, my other coworkers and I frequently visited our old team and I am so glad we can still pop by to say hello.

With this change, I have been challenging myself to learn something totally different and new. I have been looking over my notes that were given to me and I have written. I am trying to have questions answered and to make sure I am understanding my new role and responsibilities. I am trying to get to know others on the new team. I am working on keeping a positive attitude through it all. These are all things I had done in my previous job when I started but had not had to work hard at as I went along in my job unless I took on a new task as I sometimes did. We get comfortable with the same work and same team.

Change can be a good thing because it wakes us up and we have to keep reinventing ourselves and also to challenge the thoughts we have about how we can't switch jobs or try something new. Sometimes, like in my situation, life just pushes you in a new direction and we have to have hope and the confidence in our abilities to ride the waves and trust that maybe there is something bigger at work and this is the next step we are supposed to take in our lives. I loved my old job, but maybe I had reached the point where I would no longer grow, as much as I wanted to believe I could. After one year in some roles sometimes you can keep on developing and learning new things and I planned on staying there, but I might not have and there is always a risk of being stagnant in your career. I do believe that I will keep growing and developing and I feel confident in my administration skills and get excited about taking on new tasks and have a curiosity about other roles. I trust that my career at my company will be interesting and will never stay the same for long but in a good way.

Have you experienced a job transfer, job change, or changes in your lives that caught you by surprise but then you realized it was a change that you needed?  Please share your experience in the comments below!

Thank you for visiting my blog today and I hope you enjoy your weekend!

KonMari Method: Tidying up my Books

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I had a good week. Liam and I went to see the movie Avengers Endgame on Wednesday night and I really enjoy it. It was such a good movie I recommend seeing it if you haven't the storyline was heartfelt and there was a lot of thought that went into it.  I am still working on the Marie Kondo method of cleaning up called the KonMari Method. This morning I went through all of my books.

I have two shelves of books in my living room and I have two shelves of books and had so many that I had not looked at for years. I had 100 books and brought it down to 43 books. I kept only the ones that I will read again for reference or sparked joy.

Below are photos of the books I had before I started sorting through them and deciding what to keep and what to give away.  I sorted them into the categories: general, reference, and magazines. I found some children's books from my childhood so I put those aside for when I go through sentimental items. I also had some notebooks mixed in the piles and put the aside.

Pile of all of the books: before

 Below is a photo of the books I decided to keep. I chose some based on wanting to finish reading them, some because they brought up good memories and I wanted to read them again, and some for reference to go back to such as cookbooks, knitting books, and some self help books to reread.

Pile of books I am keeping: after

 The books below I chose not to keep because I either did not enjoy the book, bought it a long time ago and still did not read it, read it and will not read it again, or it just did not spark joy when I picked it up.

Giveaway pile of books: after

I forgot to take before photos of the shelves, but below are photos of the shelves after I put the books back onto them. The first photo are all books I am keeping and they are visible to guests and open in the living room. I will also be going through the items in the baskets at the bottom there is wool in the left basket and there are DVDs in the bottom basket I had barely looked at for years so I will be going through those soon as well.

Shelf after

The shelf in the photo below has books I decided to keep but also some other books to either give back to family members and some sentimental children's books on the middle shelf. The bottom shelf are miscellaneous and sentimental items I still have to go through. I will share what the shelf looks like when I am completely done the KonMari method  and have gone through all of the stages. This shelf was jam packed before with no extra space between the books and I was even starting to stack books on top of the books standing upright. It is a big change and I look forward to clearing the shelf even more to be able to store things properly and only things I really want to keep instead of just having a lot of stuff to try to hide behind the doors.

Shelf after with some things to still sort through

I also had a stack of books forming on my bedside table shelf and decided that I will keep only one book and one magazine there from now on so I can easily access what I want to read and not have a wobbly stack of books there that topple over.

Thank you for visiting and seeing the updates in my organizing process. There is still a lot to go through and today I will be taking books and clothing to the Salvation army to drop off, so we have more space and are a bit freer from the clutter. Hope you enjoyed seeing my process and I am so excited to continue on and clear more of my clutter away to just have things I love and use.

Have a great weekend!