Tidying Up

In one week two of my friends recommended the book The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art Of Decluttering And Organizing.  Sounds like a must read, doesn't it?  I was skeptical too.

I've been a messy person most of my life.  Coming from neatnik parents, I must have rebelled.  Neatness just doesn't come naturally to me.  When I met James I thought he was a tidy person.  Either I was blinded by love or I've rubbed off on him because he bears a strong resemblance to Pigpen from Charlie Brown, minus the dust cloud.

On day one after reading the book James, Adam and I cleaned out one stall of the garage so we could clean out other locations and store them in there for a nearby community yard sale.  It was great fun.  We did a pretty good job at letting stuff go, though I had a few moments of, "this is something I could use for......"  It got easier as time went on.

The next day I emptied out my clothes closets like the author of the book suggested and piled them on our bed.

James followed suit a day later.

This was not an hour long job.  Separating what to keep, what to throw away and what to give to Goodwill took a lot of time.  In total we got rid of 13 garbage bags full of clothes.  I can't believe it all fit in our small closets.

In the end we felt much lighter and looking at my closet I'm wondering if I have enough clothes to get me through the winter.  It looks great though and I'm much more careful when putting laundry away.  I think I have fewer clothes and shoes than James now.  It makes me happy looking at all the empty space in my closet.  I parted with all my jeans that had holes in them.  Maybe I should change the name of my blog now to Jeans Without Holes.

 Adam took a bunch of stuff to a yard sale but unfortunately there was still lots of stuff to load back up and bring home.

I dislike yard sales.  I'm uncomfortable with folks looking at my cast-aways.  Adam seems to like it.  I had to man the sale while he returned to our house to get another truck load of stuff.  I couldn't wait for him to return so I could leave and not have to face the people asking me about prices.  I'm even uncomfortable going to other people's yard sales and looking at stuff.

We still have our basement and much more of our garage and sheds to clean out.  Many more truck loads of trash will be delivered to the dumpsters.

I also did something that had to be done before Raisa has her next baby.  It's not exactly tidying up but it is making room for a replacement.  We took Windsor to the butcher a week and a half ago.  In 2 more weeks we'll have a freezer full of beef.  This will be the first beef we've raised ourselves.  This is Windsor last October looking very cool in his shades.