Clutter, Be Gone! {Tobin's Dragon}

"We have too much stuff in this living room!" I exclaimed to my kids this morning.

As a matter of fact, we have too much stuff in nearly every room of our house (the possible exceptions being Benjamin's little room, which I keep fairly neat and organized, and the cellar, which has lots of stuff, virtually all of which is useful and life-giving).  

It's no surprise, I'm sure, that a family of eight individuals who all have various items that we particularly treasure would end up with TOO MUCH STUFF.  It may not be surprising, but it is bothersome, and today seemed a good day to tackle the clutter that had crept into the living room.

We started our official school day while we began the task.  While we listened to our memory verses and sang along, I helped the kids disassemble the many LEGO creations they had made during the previous week or 10 days; and then I shifted to reading aloud to them while they continued the job.  We read from the Bible, wrote in our gratitude journal, each took a turn to pray, and then read quite a bit from a book of Greek myths while they continued to take apart, sort, and put the LEGO pieces away in neat compartments.  Just dealing with the LEGO situation did a lot to help the room be less messy.

But there was more we could do, and my eye landed on this wooden dragon of Tobin's.  I forget which occasion we gave it to him for--a birthday or Christmas, I'm sure--but whenever it was, it most likely was put together by Jeff (oh, doesn't he just LOVE it when I give the kids gifts like these, that have a million, give or take a thousand, pieces?!).  ;-)  But then Tobin had the fun of painting it and playing with it, and it was good.

It had been a long time since he had really played with it, however, so I asked him if he would consider having some pictures with this dragon and then letting it go.  I figured I had a pretty good chance of succeeding in getting him to say goodbye to this, since he doesn't have as many packrat tendencies as some of the people in this household.  ;-)  And sure enough, after we took these pictures, he was ready to open the door of the woodstove and put this in there, ready to be used as kindling.

You're a good man, Tobin Fisher.  :)

Acknowledging when the usefulness of a thing is past, and then letting it go, requires a certain level of maturity and wisdom.  I'm proud of Tobin for the way he's developing this skill.

And I'm grateful to have one less item sitting around in my living room!  :)

Clutter, be gone!  :)

It's Almost Embarrassing...

...no, scratch the "almost."  It IS embarrassing to see how many games my family owns.

 I had the opportunity to do just that yesterday because my extra project for this week is cleaning and organizing the living room; and our game closet, which had gotten seriously messy, was the biggest part of that project.  With nowhere to go yesterday, it was the perfect opportunity to tackle this time-consuming task; and the first step was emptying everything out of this closet.

 When I did so, the embarrassment struck.  How is it that so many people around the world struggle to have even the basic necessities of life, and we, on the other hand, have SO MANY GAMES?  I couldn't help but think of the book Material World by Peter Menzel; when I read that some time ago, I felt convicted by the amount of STUFF we have--and grateful that my family's things weren't spread out on our lawn and photographed for the world to see!  Now I'm doing a tiny portion of that to myself by showing you these pictures.

It's not as if these games represent a huge financial amount; in fact, the majority of them were not purchased new by us, but came to us as gifts, or from thrift stores or yard sales, or were handed down from my parents (or in the case of three or four games, from my grandparents!).  But even without having a hefty price tag attached to it, this pile of games still astonishes me.

As I was sorting through these stacks, I took out a few to send along with a friend who is going on an out-of-the-country mission trip soon, and I also took from this pile to add to my take-to-the-thrift-store pile.  But everything else went back into the closet: neatly sorted, with torn boxes taped up, ready to be pulled out and played with my family and our friends.

That's the good part about doing a task like this: it reminds us of what we have and prompts us to use it more than we had been.  I found games that I had actually forgotten we had, and we've already enjoyed playing them (like Scrabble Slam which Josiah and David and I played, amidst strong bursts of hearty laughter, until LATE last night).

The boys had not forgotten that we had Twister, that's for sure!  But seeing it again brought it to the forefronts of their minds, and yesterday and today they've had fun with it again.

 Moriah saw the marble track and recruited Shav to help her set it up.

 He kindly did so, and then played with it, too.

Sometimes I wonder how to react when we are confronted with the abundance (over-abundance?!) of our possessions.  Tonight I think I'll settle for the reaction of being grateful, so grateful, for the blessings we have...and as we play these games, I'll thank God for the privilege of making new memories with the ones I love.

~ Josiah and David playing Tenzi with our friends Ryan and Sarah on Tuesday evening ~

While the Firstborn Is Away...

...the mom will play.

That is, if you count organizing a storage closet as play.

Which I do.

:)

Here's the deal: in Josiah and David's room, right next to Josiah's bed, there is a door that leads to the secret world of Narnia.

Oh, wait.  Wrong closet.  ;-)

We call this closet "the suitcase closet" for the obvious reason that it's where we keep our out-of-use suitcases...as well as various other items that don't have a home elsewhere and wind up shoved in there, too.  For quite a while, I'd been wanting to clean it all out and organize what was worth keeping; but that particular task had never risen close enough to the top of my priority list to actually get done.

Until yesterday when I decided that with Josiah away on his choir tour, it would be the perfect chance for me to pull everything out of that closet and get to work.  I knew Josiah wouldn't be needing his bed anytime soon...

...which was a good thing because it got sort of buried.  :)

It was shocking unusual rewarding to see the closet that empty and clean!

As the project progressed, I was grateful for my cheering section.  Can you spot him?  :)

David has been doing a terrific job making his bed neatly every day for the last while (motivated by his desire to be a Navy SEAL someday), and that was a convenient place for Benjamin to hang out...

...and cheer me on.  That smile of his sure is good motivation.  :)

In the end, I discovered some things I could get rid of, some things I could put somewhere else in the house, and...

...more space for the stuff that really belongs in that closet. Oh, I DO love organizing!  :)

Seeing the huge suitcases we used to take to Israel when we lived there reminded me of the joys of filling each suitcase to the brim, pressing hard on the lid to make sure it could zip shut, then carefully weighing it to make sure we didn't go over the limit.  It also reminded me of the time (at least once...might have happened more than that) when our scale didn't exactly agree with the airport's scale, and I had to unzip the suitcase in the airport and take out some of the contents to get it beneath the limit.  That's not embarrassing at all.  ;-)

Yesterday by the end of the day, not only was the suitcase closet organized...

...but also Josiah's bed was covered with freshly washed sheets and quilt.

We're all ready for our boy to come home!!!!!  :)

Clutter, Be Gone! {Old Cookie Cutter Box}

While Tobin was in the process of making the maple fudge that won him a blue ribbon at our county fair, I was looking for a cookie cutter he could use to make the presentation more exciting than a simple square or rectangle would do.  I reached into a drawer in my kitchen and pulled out this box...

...only to discover that it was completely empty.

Where have all the cookie cutters gone?

I remember well this box from my childhood.  It wasn't empty then.  ;-)  But now, since its contents have either broken one by one or been misplaced, I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything to get rid of the box, too!

But only after taking a picture of it and posting it to my blog.  :)

Clutter, be gone!  :)

Clutter, Be Gone! {The (In)Famous Red Sweater}

Many years ago, long before I was born, my mother started knitting a red sweater for my dad.

Life got busy, as it tends to do; and my mother cared for her four children and for her husband and for her home and for her aging parents and for her garden and for her friends.  But she never finished the sweater.

Through the years, we would occasionally tease her gently about this; and she would laugh her wonderful, cheery laugh.  I don't know at what point she realized that she would never finish this red sweater, but I do know that if I knew the first thing about knitting, I would complete this project for her.  Not having ANY experience with knitting (and not wishing to add that to my spend-time-on-this list for a very long time), I'm ready to declutter and let this go--but not before taking some pictures and typing some words about it.  :)  If my dad didn't already have a nice red sweater, I would buy him one--much easier than figuring out how to finish knitting this one!  And there's a slight chance this wouldn't fit him now anyway.  ;-)

Unless a blog reader speaks up and says, "Hey, I could really use that red yarn!" (there is more of it than is shown in these pictures), I suppose I'll drop it off at the thrift store in hopes that someone will be able to do more with it than I ever could!

Clutter, be gone!  :)

A Worthwhile Reason to Stay up Half the Night

In my efforts to keep a reasonably clean, neat home, there are a few places in my house that ABSOLUTELY DRIVE ME BONKERS, and this is one of them: the dreaded "telephone counter."  Horrible!! 

 I KNOW the basic principle to avoid such a disaster area: "only handle each piece of paper once, and immediately decide what to do with it" and blah blah blah.  But obviously, I'm not very good at that!

Recently things were coming to a head, and my level of frustration with this spot was increasing exponentially.  So last night, I decided to do something about it.

 I stayed up late (really late) so I could tackle this project, one piece of paper, one book, one school assignment, one "priceless drawing" from my kids, one "important" piece of mail at a time.  I was DETERMINED last night to make a difference in this one solitary spot of my house.

I'm not going to tell you how late I stayed up.  I don't want my dad to worry.  ;-)

 But when I finally gave up the battle against paper clutter, the counter looked like this.

 Not perfect, but significantly better.

I think with one more late-night, who-needs-sleep-anyway session, I could conquer the whole counter and completely eliminate my infamous paper piles in this spot!

Could I KEEP it clean and clutter-free?  THAT is the question, and I'm honestly not sure of the answer.  But I'm feeling inspired enough by the progress last night that I'm motivated to stay up late again tonight, working on this area.

How far will I get with this project?  Time will tell...  :)

The 16-Week Project {Week One}

The goal: every room in the house clean and organized.

The last time I actually accomplished this: umm...never?  ;-)

The plan: in the 17 and a half weeks I have from now until my due date, use 16 of those weeks to specifically focus on my house, room by room.

The confession: I don't actually have 16 rooms in my house (there are 13 by my counting), but I figure there are going to be a few weeks in there that I don't ever get around to getting even a single room cleaned and organized.  ;-)

The additional challenge: keep the rooms that I've already focused on relatively neat and organized.  What's the point of getting each room in great shape if I let the ones I've already done slip back into chaos?  (And I speak from experience because I've done that more times than I'd like to admit!)  ;-)

The help: my boys.  As I evaluate each room, I want to come up with a workable plan for keeping it neat and clean; and already I've seen some tasks with new eyes.  My kids are more capable than I previously thought, whaddya know?  ;-)

The opportunity: right now.  Last Saturday, we officially/unofficially finished our main schoolwork (although we're continuing with some additional educational stuff that I'm really excited about, but hopefully I'll get to write more about that later).  Our extracurricular activities are virtually finished.  The garden hasn't yet started producing anything that needs canned or frozen (although we are enjoying plenty of fresh lettuce and a few other goodies).  This is my WOO.

The reality: like always when I set a goal, I'll fall short.  Baby's due date will come, and there will still be messes in my house, cupboards that didn't get cleaned out, new job responsibilities that are still not a habit for my sons, clutter that didn't get shooed out the door, possibly entire rooms that didn't get dealt with at all, etc.  I know that.  But you know what?  It's OK.  It's OK to set a high goal, knowing that I'll fall short of that mark but hoping that I'll end up further down the path to a clean and organized home than I am now!  :)

The first room: the cellar, a room that is loved by Jeff because of the sense of security he gets from looking at the food we have ;-) and appreciated by me, especially when I remember the challenge of finding room for food storage in the small apartments we lived in before moving to Virginia.  It is SO NICE to have a room like this!  :)

When my parents were designing this house, they did a very smart thing by including this cellar off the laundry room.  It's underground enough to stay fairly cool in the summer and fairly warm in the winter; I don't have to worry about things freezing in this room.

And best of all, there is space--glorious SPACE!--for jars that are full of food and those that are empty, awaiting the summer's harvest.

Organizing this room was a project that I had been longing to do for quite a while; and now that school is out (sort of), I felt perfectly fine about devoting some time to this.

It's a great project to tackle for Week One of my challenge because it's a small room and doesn't take forever and a day to organize--and even more importantly, it's relatively easy for me to keep it neat since I'm basically the only one who does much in this room.  

Well, Jeff contributes to this room, too, I'll admit...by doing things like canning hot peppers that I have to find room for.  There is a whole LONG shelf full of jars of peppers, and I didn't can any of them (and won't eat them either!).  ;-)

But generally speaking, I'm the boss in this room and don't have to worry too much about people coming along behind me and messing up the order I've created.  ;-)

We use this room from the floor to the ceiling--potatoes, for example, in a wire basket on the floor (we ran out of our own potatoes this year for the first time in a number of years and actually had to buy some to eat; but Jeff was able to plant the old, small, shriveled ones our garden produced last year, so we didn't have to buy seed potatoes) all the way to baskets hanging from the ceiling.

I said I'm the only one who does much in this room, but I should have mentioned that Moriah also enjoys this room.  :)  When I'm doing laundry, she will sometimes sit in this extra booster seat and will play with a truck in the gravel; sometimes Shav still likes to drive cars and trucks around in this gravel floor, too.  :)

A few days before I finished organizing the cellar, I had done the even quicker job of organizing the two freezers we have in our garage--a perfect task for a warm spring day when I wanted to keep an eye on Moriah while she played outside but also craved the sense of accomplishment that comes from finishing something!

Having our long-term food storage organized--both in the cellar and in these freezers--is such a good feeling.  As a bonus, it inspires me in my cooking because I discover food items that I didn't even remember we had.  ;-)

Now the big question: which room should I tackle next??  :)

* a note about the photos: neither the laundry room nor the cellar gets natural light, so pictures taken there are always a little (or a lot!) off to my eye...for example, in the first photo in this post, the walls of the laundry room look extremely bright...I can assure you that in real life, the yellow is not quite that blinding...and now that you know that, I can sleep better tonight  ;-)

Clutter, Be Gone! {Kitchen Stuff}

When I cook with a frying pan, I prefer a nonstick one.  When Jeff uses one, he chooses a cast iron skillet.  So why have we, for YEARS, had this (very good) one sitting unused in a cupboard in our kitchen?

I don't know.

But guess what?  It's not there anymore!  :)

This time, rather than drop this off at a thrift store (which is a good option!), I decided to donate it directly to a local shelter that cares for women and children who are leaving abusive relationships.  Ever since I heard a lady at church speak about this organization, my heart has been moved to consider how we could help to meet the needs of these vulnerable ones who sometimes flee from their homes with only the clothes on their backs.  Many of the people who come through the doors of this shelter need EVERYTHING in order to rebuild their lives.

Maybe even a good skillet.

When I was planning to go by the agency to drop this off, it seemed a little silly to just take a skillet.  Surely I could come up with more things than that from my I-have-a-lot-of-cupboards-and-they're-all-bulging kitchen!

It didn't take me long to think of these plates.

We've used them from time to time through the years and have certainly enjoyed them.  But goodness, we don't need them; and if these plates that look to me like a rising sun can bring smiles to the faces of a mother and her children who are going through perhaps the hardest time of their lives, then by all means, let's give them away!

I wasn't sure what my kids would think though.  After all, it's one thing to declutter and pass along things that we don't use anymore, but quite another to give away something that we still kinda like and would still use if we had it.

I was so proud of my kids, however, because when I told them that I was thinking about giving these plates to this particular shelter, they simply requested that they use them for one final meal; and then we could get rid of them.

Fair enough!  That was a request I was more than happy to grant.  :)

An even bigger test came when I asked David if we could give away his personalized lighthouse mug.  Since he has a mug that's even more personalized (with his face, not just his name!), I figured there was no need for him to have two special mugs.  And since David is such a common name, I could easily imagine a boy named David coming to the shelter and being overjoyed to be given a mug with his own name on it.  However, David tends to be like I was as a child; he really values stuff.  So would he be willing to give away his mug?

Just like with the plates, his only request was that he be allowed to use it one final time; and so he did, drinking hot chocolate in it one day at lunch (and making us laugh by stirring it with the wrong end of his spoon).  :)

Then he was ready to say goodbye to it and pass it on, with love and a prayer that someone named David may indeed benefit from it.

There were a few more things I put in the box for the shelter; and if I had time, I could round up so much more stuff that could benefit those who seek safety there!  Well, it's not a matter of finding time, but of making time; and I'll continue to do that--little by little, one item at a time, simultaneously releasing myself from the bondage of too many possessions while also being a blessing to others.

Clutter, be gone!  :)