4 garbage bags and 1 box full of garbage and 6 boxes of clothes
That’s what I got rid of this weekend.
I’ve been really wanting to scale down and streamline our way of living. We have TOO MUCH CRAP and we don’t use half of it and so…….It Must Go!
The kids rooms are the worst….they have so many toys and clothes and they never even end up wearing or playing with it and I think it’s because of the sheer volume of junk that they have to wade through in order to just try and find something.
I mean, come on…seriously, does Xandra really need 20 t-shirts and 10 pairs of pants. ABSOLUTELY NOT!
And Jeremy has more sets of toys than he can possibly play with EVER!
So, about 3 weeks ago, Jon and I planned out that this past weekend was set aside and nothing short of a family death could blast us away from decluttering and throwing out pretty much everything that we could lay our hands on.
I hadn’t seen the floor of Xandra’s and Jeremy’s room in…in…..I don’t know how long, and so I had them load everything into their blankets and drag it out into the middle of the family room carpet. Now I’ll admit that watching them bring their crap into my tidy area of the house stressed me out to no end, but I kept focused on the goal…..garbage and clutter OUT! that made it only slightly more plausable to handle.
We threw out everything that was old or stained or had holes in it and everything that was either not an absolute wear-once-a week or a favorite. That left us with about 3 pairs of pants and about 8 t-shirts…..maybe still too much in my mind, but then I have one pair of jeans and so I don’t know that I’m a good balance when it comes to that.
We sorted out toys and toy sets and the lego……OH MY GOSH….the lego was in everything. I thought we only had one box of lego…..turns out that we have 2 boxes of lego – 2 full boxes of lego…who woulda thunk it?Â
It took all day, mostly because the kids kept complaining and trying to take off…my threat was that if they stopped that whatever was left…..was GARBAGE and was GONE! So, they kept at it and come bed time – their rooms were clean and tidy and pretty much empty and they LOVED it. Jeremy even woke up the next morning and made his bed and then came out to tell us about it. Sweet, eh?
So, now comes the hard part…..keeping it that way. But I’m determined that I’m not finished yet. I really want to get to the place where we have enough of what we need and not a huge amout of surpluss or excess..there really is no need, and with less stuff – comes less mess…..at least that’s what I’m telling myself right now. It’s true, right?
We have a date for 2 weekends from now where we are going through the garage and we will be ruthless……nothing (or almost nothing) is sacred. I have to say that I do feel really good and I so wanted to just take the boxes of clothes and deliver them to the thrift store today, but there are so many little girl clothes and I have to give my sister first crack at them, but honestly, a part of me wants to save her from the “excess”, but that’s not my decision to make, is it? And maybe she has a deficit – who am I to make a call on her behalf, so for now they are sitting in my hallway and hopefully tomorrow they go to her.
This feels good, this purging…..and speaking of purging…
I’ve kept it small so to not offend your delicate sensibilities…if they are in fact delicate, ’cause after 4 kids – nothing is delicate over here.
Josiah, just short of 7 months, used the toilet for the first time…..Yah him. We have officially started introducing solids into his diet and well, diaper changing is now officially nasty. My mom encouraged Angelica to use the toilet from a very early age – I think she was around 5 months old when we first started hanging her over the toilet – and she was in little tiny underwear when she was 9-10 months old.  She was so cute when she’s run to the toilet at a year old…..I hated changing dirty diapers and changing cloth poopy diapers is even less fun. I haven’t bought a sprayer for my toilet yet and I desperately need one. Anyway, it’s not a true toilet training of the child as much as it’s a parent training….being able to read your child’s cues, but heck – anything that makes me have to change less poopy diapers….I’m all for it. And so it starts…….
Hey, don’t say I ever held anything back from you – I’m all about sharing….maybe too much so, but hey…..what can I say?
