Cleaning House
While we’re on the subject of maintaining my sanity, (haha) we CLEANED UP this weekend! Wes and I had both reached our thresh-holds for chaos and clutter and spent the entire weekend cleaning it up. All the tools, supplies and materials in the main level got put away and the main level actually fells almost like a normal, calm, clean, lovely house. Almost. 🙂
Do you remember what it looked like when I showed you the 3 year home tour? It basically still looked the same — only worse!
Oh hello wall, I haven’t seen you in like a year!
I practically forgot about this little niche!
Upstairs we sorted through our junk, donating or trashing what we haven’t touched in a year.
I snapped a picture after we’d already been at it for half a day.
OK so I fudged a little on our “one year rule” with my craft supplies. I DID donate a lot but kept things I know I’ll want to use again some day (even if I haven’t used it recently).
We took three truck loads to the donation center and two truck loads to the recycling center. Then we had to resort to temporary Porch Storage because they are closed on Sundays.
Yeah, that’s after 5 truckloads hauled away!
We only made it through half the room but have committed to work on it every weekend until we have gone through EVERYTHING we own. Even through we didn’t finish, it feels so good to have accomplished what we did. It really is liberating.
Isn’t it amazing how good it feels to get stuff out of your house? I’m a pack rat and have things that I haven’t used in years – cassettes from college days, old crafting supplies for crafts I don’t do anymore, music I don’t listen to anymore, papers I don’t know what to do with and books everywhere – not to mention newer stuff that comes from having a child. I’ve recently been tackling one room at a time and trying to get rid of as much as I can. It’s hard, but satisfying and it’s so nice to walk into a space and not have clutter everywhere. What amazes me is that I have such a hard time talking myself into throwing something out (or donating it) and the next day cannot even remember that I ever owned it.