Join the Clipboard Brigade!

This post is all about inspiration and motivation. Dawn's blog has inspired so many people mostly because she doesn't put on airs about who she is or what she does. She is genuine. She doesn't create a scene for us to be amazed by, she simply gives us snapshots of her life. Her very real, very genuine life. That is inspirational all by itself, but then I take a look at what she does and I get blown away! So it seems, I am not the only one who noticed her Thanksgiving and daily clipboard. Well, Dawn, you did it again.
My new de-uglified clip board. Did I HAVE to decorate it? No. But I also didn't HAVE to drink that cup of real (not decaf) coffee the other afternoon which haunted me until about 2 am so why not?

I have been coming up with a daily (would like) TO DO list that sits in the top spot on my clipboard. I had to add the "would like" part otherwise, my inner Donna Reed will escape from her shackles and taunt me with all of the things I didn't get done. I am also working on a daily chore checklist for myself and the kids similar to Elizabeth's and the one at Motivated Moms. This week is shaping up to be very busy so that might not get fleshed out until next week.

Cheryl has been an inspiration as well lately. Have you seen her mudroom? I wanted to go add one on to my house just so I could organize it. First I had to find out what it was. We don't have mudrooms in Texas, or basements, or those big huge attics that you can play hide and seek in; you can't even stand up straight in ours without bonking your head. If Husband hadn't lived all over the country and been able to verify with personal anecdotes the existence of these seemingly mythological places, I might have believed them to be as real as Camelot.

Well, since I didn't have a mudroom to organize, I turned on my living/computer room. We had this old computer armoire set up as a movie station. There use to be an old TV connected to a DVD player here along with a plethora of junk. I didn't think to use it for the kid's computer because the keyboard drawer was very broken. However, my clever and handy husband was able to fix it so now it is their computer/ Math-U-See workstation. It has a second pull out surface that can be used for block manipulation and we added a plywood shelf below to hold the box of manipulatives...which...seem to not be in their place next to the CD player. Work in progress, I guess.
By moving the kid's computer to the armoire, I confiscated moved to the desk on the opposite side of this room. Yes, we have two computers, actually, I won't even reveal the number of computers we have in this house both working and broken, or which ones belong to us or friends who abandoned them after Husband helped them get whatever information he could get off of their decrepit hard drives but such is life with a computer guy. Technology is his job so I live with my drawers stuffed with cables and my closets full of cold metal boxes. He is so worth it!

I have a few more plans for this corner of the room, but it works great for right now. I love having my own space. I think it might go a long way to help get my rear in gear organizationally and motivationally speaking.
I know you've heard me say it before and you are probably tired of it but the summers here are so hard. The heat just saps all of the energy and drive I have and I feel my body slipping into maintenance mode. When that first blast of cool weather hits it teases and taunts me with how quickly it flits away again. Now that the cold air is here to stay, I feel my brain waking up. I have been told that right now is when you people up north start feeling those urges to hibernate but the cold makes me come alive. Maybe it's because I know that rarely does our cold come with any of that yucky stuff that keeps you stuck inside. Mostly its just cold crisp air and there are plenty of warm woolly resources to deal with that.

So, that's it for now. Help me stay motivated, OK? Let me know in the combox if you have stumbled upon some fabulously simple, can't-function-without-resource or idea that has helped you get motivated and/or organized. You gals keep posting amazingly inspirational ideas and I will continue to snatch them. My sanity depends on it. No pressure! : )