Organize your Stuff Challenge: Week 7 Ideas

Its OK PA me... You can do this..."Hello. My name is Scrappnbee. It has been one day since I last procrastinated." There, that wasn't so bad. I apologize for falling off the Procrastinators Anonymous waggon during my triple whammy of Valentines/ President's Weekend and the Olympics. Darned you handmade Valentines mini albums!! ...and taped delayed west coast feed of Olympics until Midnight!!! (sorry, my internal monologue is broken again). After last Monday came and went, I kept saying...I'll get to it... I'll get to it... But isn't that the PA Me way?

OK. Now to Idea week (a week late). I have several books of ideas...easy, put them on the shelf. Ta-dah! Cue Bon Jovi: Ohhh, I'm half way therrre...

Now to the magazines. This is where the PA me and the Inner Hoarder (who has been plotting a coup since Paper week...I swear!) finally overpowered the POW, tied her to a bed and started an audio book of Misery by Stephen King, by shamelessly bribing OCD Me. Confused? I blame the message board and double sided print in magazines. No, I blame myself for being sidetracked by shiny objects, ideas, and the Olympics, and really lacking the motivation to cut into magazines which I have hauled around, and I confess, yes, Hoarded, for 8 moves in 12 years.

For years, early in my scrapping career, when I had less kids, more free time and more income, I had the subscriptions, and bought the magazines off the rack, and I was inspired. As I have grown, I tend to use them less and less (they are still in their moving box from May '08 right now), and rely more on my own sense of style in scrapbooking. However, they still have a special spot in my heart and I love to look back at them...yes, I realize that this IS the classic definition of Hoarding. I am owning the fact that I just said in a box since '08 and love to look at in the next sentence. Just do not report me to Clean House with Niecy Nash. Promise?

I just couldn't do it. It is like looking at that band aid that has been on your (insert hairy body part here) and you can not do it... OK, if it is your kid you can, but if it is you... I could not do it. I know, I am weak. And the solution that would be least painful would be to scan my magazine ideas, but I am not a look at my laptop and review my scanned ideas kind of gal. I am more tactile than that. For goodness sake, I took my Becky Higgins Sketches and took it to Staples and had the covers laminated and then re-bound with a spiral spine.

And then, there was the fact that the magazine editors chose to print on both sides of the paper! I mean seriously! Shouldn't they know that at some point we would like to remove some of these ideas and keep them? Some of the ideas that I like the most were multi page events, especially on some of those earlier magazines like Simple Scrapbooks where they showed beginner, more advanced, and a scrap book store threw up on my layout. Ive' tried, but I will never be an "advanced" scrapbooker. It is just not my style. (But to those of you who are, I think your scrapbooks are works of art and I envy you).

Leighanne1941 from the http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/ site had the most awesome binder that she decorated and kept all of her ideas in page protectors. Thank you Leighanne1941!!! Ahhhh...clear page protectors....hmmmm. The POW was excited. She had a way to make this happen!

Coup. Seriously. Right then and there. Suddenly OCD me kicked in, egged on by the Inner Hoarder, and that other person nobody likes and with whom we almost never play...Budget Me. OCD Me wanted to figure out how we planned to sort these ideas, what do we do if side A is a keeper, and side B is a keeper, but they belong in different categories... My brain was beginning to shut down... and the budget... yeah. I have blown through that and left it in the dust. But, going la-la-la while looking at your checkbook will only last so long. She was the one who was most aggressive in tying down the POW and picking out the soundtrack for the POW once OCD me told her the cost of making this step in organizing happen. This year we have an actual Spring Break travel for a family of 5 is on the horizon, and so I needed to pace myself, especially since I paid cash for plane tickets two weeks ago.

So, I finished my 3 mini albums (from my LSS, but designed by Kerry, one of the founders of http://www.scrapyardchicks.com/ who are awesome!), never got to my layout, gave over my laptop to my Oldest Child for... whatever it was he wanted (Boy Scout Merit Badge stuff I think...but probably games too), ran around for swim lessons, scouts, grocery shopping, fixing a broken dryer door, stuff not scrap related, and assumed a vegetative state in front of the TV to watch all things Olympic. I did manage (yesterday) to get two 3-inch D ring binders to decorate while zoning over said all things Olympic. That's progress, right?

The only silver lining is that Fabulous Spouse is also in an Olympic induced catatonic trance, and he has not yet realized that I am a week behind. So for Nantini/ Nancy and all of the others who are still recovering from paper week, I FEEL your pain, you are not alone, and I pinky promise to do better for next week, as long as I can keep my personalities in line!