I am exhausted, so just a quick one today.
I finished going through all the kids books yesterday. I’d say I got rid of about 60% of them.
I threw away any that were torn, missing covers, missing pages, or had been colored in so badly with marker that you couldn’t read the words.
The rest are in boxes out in the garage. I might bring them to Goodwill, but what I’d really like to do is donate them to a teacher or daycare or preschool that could use them. If you are a teacher who might like to go through them, let me know.
Anyway, here is the thing.
The house feels lighter. For real.
There is literally a difference in how heavy the house feels, just from getting rid of all those books.
Now today it’s the weekend. My parents have been babysitting every night during the week while I coach and they came up to babysit this morning again while I coached swim practice. My husband is still out of commission from surgery, so it’s kind of hard to get much of anything done with all the kids home, but my parents are pretty much sick of all of us at this point and needed a break from us, so I didn’t have a big window of opportunity today to declutter.
So I tackled something smaller.
As I’ve previously mentioned, according to Marie Condo who wrote my favorite new book, the life changing magic of tidying up, the most effective way to get rid of crap is not to go through room by room, but category by category.
So I did my clothes first. Then I did the kids’ books.
Today I did the plastic food containers. That drawer was a mess and it was making the lunch-making process take longer because it was so out of control.
Number 4 offered to help me. A nine-year-old can definitely sort and match tops and bottoms of plastic containers.
So she took care of that part of it, and this was a manageable task for the day.
If something didn’t have a matching top or bottom, I got rid of it. If the container was old and nasty, I got rid of that, too.
All that crap in the middle of the picture got chucked.
Now my drawer can open and close easily, and the house feels even lighter. I’m not kidding. It’s true.
And when the house feels lighter, my brain literally feels lighter, too.
Getting rid of shit is fun!
Tomorrow I move on to the cd’s.
Those things are driving me crazy!
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I saw a great tip the other day for all the tops. Use a dish drainer. It lets all of the tops stand up and stay in place!
Your posts about this are truly inspiring me and little by little I am getting rid of stuff. I bought the book but haven’t taken the time to read it yet. Your posts are like cliff notes for me. THANK YOU!!!
I absolutely love your blog! You are super insightful and I love hearing about your experiences. Thank you so much! sandrabasile.com
Very nice. A tidy house definitely helps the brain function more clearly in my opinion. You have a lot going on; maybe try to carve out some “mommy time” for yourself this week? You are seriously super woman!
I did the same thing right before school started to help with the new lunch making routine for the kids. It has been a sanity saver. I was so tired of pulling out mismatched containers for leftovers or the kids complaining that they couldn’t find things to put lunch items in. I definitely threw out more than I would have guessed but it felt good to be able to always find what you need. Baby steps for the the rest of the house right?