Don't Reinvent the Wheel | "Werkit" Out Wednesday

I’m not afraid to admit that sometimes when I need to work out and it need to be a QUICK workout, I go to Pinterest.

There’s all kinds of cool pins that deal with workouts that hit certain parts of your body. Why reinvent the wheel to make your own??

Here’s one that I did. (HERE)

I needed the workout to be real quick. I can't remember why I needed it to be fast ... but I assume it was because my life is chaotic and the kiddos were crazy and I just needed it  to be quick.

Really don't need a reason I suppose!

So, the littles and I did a quick run and then I looked up on Pinterest and scored this awesome workout score work out.

The children did not want to cooperate at all.

They were all over the place running around and jumping on me (basically, being themselves). 

I grabbed a toy for the little girl to kind of chill and play with. My son played on his bike for a little bit. He also worked out his core with me for a little bit. 

But mostly he just bugged his little sister. There was a lot of "don’t do this," "don’t do that," "stop that," "don’t touch her," or "leave her alone," and "why did you take that" and so on and on. 

However, I got my workout on. It was a beautiful day. AND the kids got to see me trying to stay healthy.

Hopefully, this will encourage you and my children to just do it. 

Even if you steal borrow a workout from someone else!

PCS?! What the What?! Part 5 | My Hot Mess

PART 5 -- if you're behind Check out PART 1, PART 2,  PART 3 & PART 4 using the links.

 

The movers have arrived.

UnPacking ....

Blah. 

Okay, okay, so the packers offered to unpack for me ... but honestly, who really knows where you want to put shit when you have tons of shit wrapped in paper and boxes?! I mean, unless you did what I suggested you to do in Part 4 -- STALKING THE PACKERS TO ENSURE EACH ROOM HAS A BOX. You don't know WHAT you're going to find in each box.

Even if labeled "Kitchen" you may just find a pair of dirty underwear in it as well.

Or a ladle in the box labeled "Bathroom."

Or the crockpot bottom in the "Kitchen" box and the lid in the "Garage" box and the ceramic piece in the box labeled, "master bedroom."

So, again, I suggest you be on those packers super close ... like so close you can smell what they had for breakfast. 

Seriously.

Ya'll the unpackers were quick. They had the truck unloaded by lunch time. 

I labeled each room in the house with the first letter of the person's name who would be sleeping there. This made it super simple to say which boxes went to which room

Again, not all the boxes were labeled properly, or had multiple rooms worth of stuff in it ... I either made the executive decision in which room it would go in, or it would stay in the garage until I was ready to unpack it.

It was easy to say, "Oh baby room, that goes in the 'G' room." or "Master box? Goes in 'M' room." Ect. And I mean, the unpackers were pretty smart, boxes labeled kitchen or glassware would go in the kitchen and knew the TVs go in the living rooms ... I mean, gotta give them SOME credit.

Once all the boxes and furniture was unloaded, the unpackers headed to lunch. Where in which I just stared at the boxes until they returned because I was starting to stress about unpacking. LOL

Luckily, the boys were still with grandparents and not running amok around the boxes and breakables. Again, I HIGHLY recommend the children (and/or pets) stay with someone while you pack, move, and unpack!

Once the unpackers returned, they offered to unpack boxes but when I realized the packers packed oddly, I just wanted these guys to put together the furniture and move them around to where I wanted it in the rooms. That was it, and they seemed pleased with that decision. LOL

The next 6 days, I would go box to box unpacking things; floating around in a sea of package paper and with my trusty knife on my side. 

I would fend off paper cuts, oddly wrapped utensils, cuss out the packers for putting dirty underwear in with the kitchen goods and search the endless piles of paper to ensure I had everything out of the boxes before tearing them down. 

This was the hard part. Once the box was empty, I had tons of paper and no where to put it. So I stuffed some boxes with the paper and broke down other boxes and put into other boxes. It was hard making room for everything when you still have empty boxes laying around. 

By the end of the first day of unpacking, I had nothing accomplished except for the refrigerator magnets. Even though there were boxes EVERYWHERE, at least it became home with the pictures of loved ones and the magnets of the places we've been and things we've accomplished.

Guys, seriously. 

Take your time unpacking.

Not everything has to be done in one day. 

It was just me unpacking for 6 days because my husband had to return to work. I literally took it room by room. And even though boxes had multiple rooms in them, I just opened the box, unwrapped the piece of paper, put the item somewhere in the room, and repeated until the box was empty.

The first room completely unpacked was the baby's room. I think sole because he doesn't have much. LOL.

Plus, I made the boys' rooms priority since I knew they'd be coming home within 7 days. 

Next, once the boxes were unpacked, and things placed SOMEWHERE in the room; I would begin to set up the room. I made beds, I placed items on shelves, bookshelves, drawers, and began to hang pictures on walls. 

Though I will admit, the pictures were last to be hung. Since after all, that's what completes a room! 

6 days ya'll. SIX.

Some say that's fast some would say why so long. But I was on a deadline. I needed the house put together before the grandparents brought the boys home.  And I did it. 

It wasn't perfect, but it was done.

My husband and I would also take the weekends to figure out places to take the boys. I can tell ya, my husband ONLY unpacked his clothes because I figured since I was home anyway, I should take that time to unpack and not waste the weekends. 

We took a walking tour around El Paso to see the murals ... sorta drove around ... ;)

Took advantage of the free concerts in the canyon to see Billy Townes and Marachi bands. And have a few margaritas. It was nice to have "Us" time. Especially after unpacking all day.

We also drove around the Concordia Cemetery (full of history) since we knew the kids would think it was "creepy." We also checked out the farmers' market and a little town that had a gunslingers show. Y'all, take time to SEE and ENJOY your new location. After all, you're going to be there for however long and that's where you're going to say where you're coming from when you leave. You better KNOW the place.

And y'all ... I still have unpacked boxes in the garage. 

I can't tell ya whats in them. Other than what it says on the labels but the house is as put together as it needs to be at the moment.

We are also working with less space in this house than the other and that was the frustrating part. Trying to figure out where everything would go. 

A lot of trips to Goodwill happened. 

I thought I had purged a lot before moving but when I got here and saw that there wasn't much storage, I really started to rethink things I saved and why would someone need two irons and that sweat stained sweater anyway. 

The trash men must've loved pulling up to our house and seeing the overflowing garbage can ... and the multiple boxes and trash bags. I know Goodwill loved me showing up every day with another 3 boxes of stuff to donate. 

Tips I wish I had done or did that you SHOULD do:

1) Follow the packers around when they filled boxes to ensure that each box was just ONE room. If it wasn't a full box, just had them fill it with paper. Multiple rooms in one box is unnecessary stress.

2) (because you would have done tip #1) Have the unpackers unpack your boxes. You may not know exactly how you want a room set up but at least you knew what was in the boxes and saved time unpacking since everything would have been unwrapped. Side note: also labeling the rooms with a letter to tell the unpackers where to put the boxes was super helpful, because saying, "the second room to the left." 5 billions times sucks.

3) Never underestimate the power of help from anyone who is willing to watch your kids or animals while moving or unpacking.

4) Definitely purge before packers pack your house. My mantra was that I'd figure it out in Texas. Bad idea, it was more of a pain while unpacking trying to figure out if the item was needed or could be donated/trashed. You WILL need to purge without a heart. Things have less value to them when you're not attached to them. If you haven't used it within the last 6 months, trash/donate.  

5) Have the unpackers return to pickup empty boxes. Our trash men/recycle men were not too helpful if the stuff was outside the cans. They would just take the stuff from the cans. So I would have to wait a whole other week to throw the rest of the stuff away. Having the unpackers pick up my boxes a month later was FANTASTIC. Though it did take up a lot of space in the garage and I still can't put my car in the garage.

6) If you are lucky enough to have someone who stays home during the week, let them unpack everything because it sucks having to waste your weekends unpacking. If you HAVE to unpack on the weekends, only unpack one day of that and then enjoy the rest of your weekend. Guys, the house will eventually get unpacked. Why stress yourselves out trying to do it in a hurry?

7) We are still contemplating this, but get a small storage unit for the military gear. My husband and I have so much shit for the military and we have a smaller garage than last house. So everything is taking up the garage and we can't use the garage for what it's intended for. To house the cars. We need a garage, especially with this heat here.  My only thing is, if we have the unit, I may put more stuff in it and why pay for storage for stuff you don't use anyway?

Hope this helps you out a tad ... I know a few of you are going through this right now and hopefully this provides some sort of insight for y'all. Because I was going in blindly and had no clue what to expect! Stay tuned, I have one more part this series (figuring out your location)!

So hang in there and Good Luck! 

Making the Most of Your Time | Girl Boss

Y'all ... I have a problem with staying on task.

I guess you could say I'm ADD. 

Maybe that's where my kid got the craziness ....

NO...

No, he got that from his father.

I swear it. Never from me. I'm awesome and perfect.

LOL

I digress.

Anyway, ... wait see? I can't even keep my thoughts straight in this damn blog! ha!

Today I tried something new. I decided to set my phone alarm to keep me on track. Sometimes All the time, when I'm on the computer, I seem to bounce from one task to another.

I'll be editing, then I'll check Facebook, then 15 minutes lost, I'll get back to editing. Then I get bored and start something personal, then 30 mins lost, I'll get back to editing or what the hell, I'll switch to blogging. And by the time I know it, the eldest is home and the baby is awake from the nap and now I'm juggling afternoon snacks and telling the baby to stop messing with my photo props, and eldest that no, he cannot play the xbox until his homework is down and then ....

SHIT.

I forgot to thaw the meat for dinner. And oh by the way, the editing that was due today is not done and now I have to spend the evening away from the family to finish editing and get the gallery up for the wonderful family that hired me but now I'm not close to my family because I'm locked in the dark making some other family happy.

Exhausting, right?

I mean, everyone makes being a work-at-home mom seem so simple. In actuality, it's not. When you go to an office, you're family is already taken care of. Whether they're at school or daycare. You are not interrupted by crying, hungry babies or angry, hormonal kids not wanting to do homework. You are in an office with other people who are stuck in an office doing their jobs. So more than likely, you can get your job done and complete, minus the phone calls or noisy co-workers.

Work-at-home moms rock because they still have to do laundry, watch the kids, make dinner and all that jazz. And that my dear friends, is why nap time is so extra special to work-at-home moms so you HAVE to be able to manage it perfectly.

So the thing I did differently, as I mentioned above before I went on my soap-box, was that I timed my "nap-time work schedule." My littlest sleeps from about noon to 3pm. So that gives me three hours to get shit done. Today I still multi-tasked but this time I timed it.

When I put the baby down for nap at noon, I threw in a load of laundry. Then I got to work at catching up on a personal photo album since, surprise! As a photographer, your own photography gets pushed to the side (i.e. editing vacations, scrapbooking, printing, hanging...ect). So, one of my goals is to catch up on my photo albums. For an hour I did just that using, Shutterfly. Then at 1pm, I began to edit client work. I did about 30 mins of one client and 30 mins of another client. That got me about 20 images, give or take, on each client done. Basically, they're almost complete. 

Then at 2pm (after throwing the wet clothes into the dryer), I forced myself to come on here and blog. Why do I say forced? Because Facebook was REALLY calling my name ... so I cheated a tad and looked on Facebook for about 10 minutes ... this is why I am now whisking through this blog hopefully not too crazily because when my "For Real STOP!" Alarm goes off, I HAVE to stop because a) my eldest comes home from school and b) if I don't wake the baby from his nap by 3pm, he won't sleep at night. GAH! 

The struggle is real folks.

And there it goes, my alarm. So I HAVE to get off people. So hopefully maybe this blog will give you a little insight in work-at-home moms. I don't want to scare you off entrepreneurs. 

I don't. 

Because seriously, working for myself is the best decision I've made. Seriously. I hate to think about working for someone else and on their schedule. I can take vacation whenever I want. I can stay home with the kids. I can partake in school activities and I can have weekends to enjoy family instead of catching up on household issues. 

Guys, be your own boss. But just realize that you'll probably work more hours in the day/night and your boss is the biggest bitch out there. ;) I'm telling ya.

Good luck y'all!