Saturday marked the beginning of a 4 day effort of a major household clean-out that apparently, I only do once a year. Why you ask? Well, blog-world... I'll tell you. Because there was so much stuff that needed to be thrown out it was embarrassing.
I began with Elisan's room. It is no secret this child is a pack-rat. But, her pack-rattiness far exceeded my expectations this year. I threw away two big bags of stuff from her room and truth be told, I could have collected another entire bag, but the child would not turn loose of some of that stuff. (Btw, always (always!!) have your child rummage through their stuff with you. There is nothing worse that your child going through the trash bags, only to find their most treasured ... string of plastic Mardi Gras beads in there. It just makes for a pleasant experience all around.)
Next stop, Kyla's room. She is not a pack-rat yet. In fact, any special trinkets that KM gets, actually end up in Elisan's room, in all of her pack-ratty goodness. Kyla Mae's room was just junky with old toys (namely McDonald's toys...) that deserved their place in the trash can.
I headed downstairs to my laundry room/pantry. Yes... that's right. My food is stored in the same place my dirty laundry (and subsequently clean laundry) goes. Yum! So, anyway... that room was a complete disaster to begin with, but tack on the holidays and it was a total catch-all-for-anything-that-doesn't-yet-have-a-place. It was an all day event on Monday.
Tuesday was spent cleaning out my closet. I'm finally getting rid of those last fat clothes that I've held onto in case I "balloon out" (as Randy puts it) again. But, I decided to get rid of them all, except for a couple of pairs of jeans... (just in case I balloon out again... I'll need some britches.) Now, I have a gazillion extra plastic hangers in my closet. I'll need to fill those up again. Bring on the sales!
And no matter how many times I scanned the house last week in attempts to collect every.single.last.piece of Christmas decorations... I gathered up at least another 1/2 full box of decorations and linens this week that was overlooked when we put it all away last week. Why is that?
So, now... we're de-cluttered and feelin' good. Now, if only I can keep it up.
Eh? What's the rush?
We did the same exact thing only the pack rat in my family is Marcus. His motto is if it isn't broken it doesn't need to be thrown out.
ReplyDeleteI'm working on said decluttering, too. What is it with those packrats? We are moving Ashley's room this weekend (she is trading rooms to the bigger, nicer guest room she should have had from the beginning) and I hope to lose much of her trash, I mean stuff, in the process.
ReplyDeleteLA
Oh, the joy of unclutteredness. It's something I only experience when I go to my mom's. She washes dishes immediately after every meal, only has one spot that has paper clutter (and that is minimal), and the rest of the house is always tidy. I always chock it up to the fact that I don't have a storage room. That's right--once I have one of those I'll be a neat freak, right?
ReplyDeleteActually, I'm pretty hopeless. I think I could clutter up an empty room.