January is Get Organized Month and we’re already getting closer to the end of the month and I haven’t made much progress.

Sure, I cleaned off the top of my desk back on Jan. 8 and I can still see most of the top of my desk (and the stuff on top is all current), but our house isn’t feeling too organized. I looked for an article we ran in the Jewish News when I was working full-time in the office and was surprised when I saw the headline (“Conquer your clutter in 2015“) that it was three years ago! How is that possible? I thought for sure my clutter would be conquered by now. (The article was written by professional organizer Rachel Winter, owner of Happy Home Organizers.)

Last year I listened to an audio book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,” on my morning and afternoon commutes and was so inspired to declutter the house that I even started a blog about it to document some of the items I was having trouble getting rid of. I think I got to about eight posts.

But it’s not too late! Yesterday I cleared off a shelf and a table that were covered with clutter. A week or so ago it was piles of paper in our office. Today I cleaned off my computer desktop. (January is also Clean Up Your Computer month.) One step at a time.

Our Medley Moment

Today, Jan. 21, is National Hugging Day. And January is National Slow Cooker Month. So I have some vegetarian chili cooking downstairs (I used a variation of this recipe from geniuskitchen.com: Granny’s slow cooker vegetarian chili.) I made cornbread muffins to go with it and everyone finished their heaping bowl of chili. Yay!

Here’s our group hug for National Hugging Day:

As you can see below, they took this assignment very seriously:

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