I’m trying to fight clutter in my home, and it makes sense that I should try to eliminate clutter in my computer time, as well. I spend a lot of time on my PC–blogging, paying bills, working, keeping up with friends, shopping, etc., that I really need to streamline my time.

I’ve decided to reduce the amount of email that shows up in my inbox. I’m subscribed to a lot of random newsletters, and I usually delete them or quickly skim them upon arrival.

Sure, it doesn’t take that long to click the “delete” button, but if I see that I have a new message, I might get sidetracked long enough to stop and see what it is, and waste even more time.

So, I’m going to start unsubscribing from any and all email lists that don’t interest me. It takes a little longer to unsubscribe, but I hope that this will pay off for me in the near future.

Secondly, I’m unsubscribing from even more blogs in my feed reader. I chopped a ton of blogs from Google Reader not long ago, and it felt great!  Today, I got rid of eight more that no longer inspire me (or blogs that are no longer active).

Finally, I organized the icons on my desktop. I sorted through the miscellaneous document and filed it where appropriate. It’s much cleaner now.

eh, you probably don’t. But I wanted to post this anyway.

Daylight saving time is driving me mad! Just when I thought I got my sleep finally under control, we “spring forward.”

Instantly, we had to wake up an hour before our bodies thought we should. Also, at 6 a.m. it was almost light out before DST. Not so anymore. Now, it’s pretty dark for awhile in the morning.

It’s been really hard for me to get up when it’s dark out, so in a way, I’m back to where I was.

I like to spend time with Shane in the mornings, and I often drive him to the bus stop at 7:15 or so…but this week it’s been hard.

I can’t wait for it to be at least semi-light out in the mornings! Arg!

After going YEARS without having a good night’s sleep, I’m happy to report that I think I’m finally starting to get past my chronic insomnia.

I was a bit worried about the effect daylight saving time would have on my body, but so far, so good.

I’m being more strict with forcing myself to go to bed by 10:30ish, and it’s really helping. I’m automatically waking up around 6 a.m. or a little sooner, but as far as I know, I’m sleeping through the night.

I’ve been doing a short exercise routine during the day, and I hope to add to that. I think even a 15-minute ab workout is helping me.

Finally, the biggest thing: I stopped worrying about sleep. I had read some literature suggesting that if you’re worried you’ll never get a good night’s sleep, you’re probably right. It’s better to have a positive attitude about it instead.

So, after implementing those things in my life (and praying hard about it!) I feel like I’m on the path to great sleep every night.

It’s nice to know that there’s probably not anything physically wrong with me that caused my sleep issues!

This weekend, Shane’s brother and his girlfriend came for a visit. We had a lovely time! To save money, we did a lot of free activities, including driving around town to take in some views and playing board games.

We played Dutch Blitz, Apples to Apples, Taboo, Scategories, and maybe another here or there. Board games are such good entertainment–and really cheap! We’ll probably take a few games with us when we all go to Florida in May.

We also cooked most of our meals at home, saving tons of time and money. Everything turned out well, in my opinion.

Finally, we watched a whole bunch of movies and TV via OnDemand. There was no added cost to that, either. It was amusing to have silly movies in the background while we played games. We heard zany one-liners and saw crazy scenes.

If the weather was better, we might have spent more time out and about. Still, we saw several neighborhoods and took the Mon incline to the top of Mount Washington for a spectacular view. Not quite free, but still, pretty cheap.

I wish we didn’t live seven hours from them. I miss ‘em already!