a realization

Hi, my name is Leanne and I am a pack rat. Shhhew... it feels good to get that off my chest. I called my mom last week with this epiphany of sorts and she simply laughed in that "ummm, yeah, I know," kind of way. But anyway, it was news to me. SOOO, that being said we've been busy decluttering. It all started with the 4022 toys that have invaded every inch of our home. At any given moment there are toys in the living room, under the furniture, on the furniture, in the Bugs' bedroom, occassionally in the playroom, in the bathroom, outside, in the basement, in the cars, and in our bedroom. I think that covers it, but I'm sure there are a few other places I've failed to mention. Bugman and I gathered up all of the smaller toys we could find and made a pile in the living room. It looked a little something like this:

I don't really think the pictures do justice to this pile, and remember this was only the small toys, oh, and Daniel had already put up over 150 hotwheels.

We sorted all of the toys into three piles, keep, give-away, and trash (i.e. missing pieces or broken) and managed to throw away 1 garbage bag, and give-away 2 garbage bags. We even had "Aunt Ashey" come over and review our decisions for approval because she's a task master when it comes to weeded out unneeded items.

We then sorted the toys left into 5 small bins, so there is one bin dumbed in the toybox, one in the basement, and three in the closet. This way we can stay on top of the mess and rotate toys every week or two. I'm hoping this will also encourage the Bugs to play with a bigger variety of toys as before it was somewhat overwelming and they tended to always go for the same things.

We even found the perfect spot for all of the puzzles, in the drawers under the TV.

We continued our 'purge' by sorting through the 11, 18gallon bins of baby/toddler clothes, and managed to weed out three bins of items that were stained (its weird how stains that you thought were gone show back up after being stored for awhile) or that we can be given-away.

This week I'm hoping to sort through Daniel and my clothes, and then off to the basement... which could take the rest of our life.

Stay tuned - tomorrow we're back to the Bugs!