DeJunking!

For those of you that know me - I am not an organizer.  If stuff is organized, I can’t find anything that I am looking for.  If I have a heaping piles, I know what’s in each pile.  This frustrates my husband, ok - it drives him absolutely CRAZY!!  I would love to be able to do a 31 day of declutter as my friend Michelle did and blogged about:  http://www.michellemuckala.com/category/31-days-to-a-de-cluttered-home but seriously - I need to be realistic cause I need a hell of a lot more time than 31 days!!

365 days - my goal to get my house organized this year!!  Think I can do it???  Here goes nothing....First off - I need to dejunk and part with things.  This week, I made the move.  Laundry was the number one on the list.  I have not been able to see the bottom of my laundry room in forever.  Is the flooring tile?  Cement?  Carpet?  I managed to get a peak of it after MANY loads of laundry.  Then the fun part comes - putting the stuff away.  You see, I can get the stuff washed and dryed but then it comes out to the living room and hangs out on the big chair.  There it sits until someone is looking for something, or the dog decides to bury himself in it.  Half ends up on the floor and I am sure half of that ends back up in the laundry.  Imagine 8 loads of clean laundry piled up, guess it was time to get started on the dreaded job, even my kids groaned when I said it was time to put it all away.  But first they had strict instructions to go through their closets and dressers pulling everything out that they didn’t wear or like anymore.

The laundry chair

Laundry room after the girls
cleaned their room one day.
That was fun to wash
all of that! 

One trip, two trip, three trip, four!  OH MY!!  Had enough stuff for 3 regular sized garbage bags of clothes and that was just theirs!!  Thankfully I had already gone through my closet back in Nov and had managed to come up with 3 bags myself.  There was actually a lot more but I had sold some of it on the online rummage sale.  I would have loved to sell more but quite frankly it was a hassle taking pictures of everything, listing the stuff, replying to people if they had questions and then also setting up meeting times for pick up.  And that means the stuff is still here until it sells and if I need to dejunk - I need it gone NOW. 

Up until last year I usually donated all of the kids clothes to Head Start but since my kids are older than the kids that go there - Head Start has no use for the bigger sizes.  I really wanted to be able to donate all the clothes somewhere where people that needed them didn’t have to pay for them.  The kids clothes went to a church where they have a clothing restore where people in need can come in and get clothes for their kids and my clothes along with two bags of the kids toys went to a community center that offers them just like the church.  As long as I don’t see “our” clothes end up on the rummage sale site I will continue to donate to those places.

PHEWW!  Just like that - 8 BAGS GONE!!  That is 8 less bags of clothes I need to wash!!!  But I better not get too overly excited though as there are at least 6 more loads of laundry piled up on the chair again.......not to mention the 3 baskets of socks that are hiding out in my bedroom that need mating.....Wonder how many more bags of clothes I can come up with to exit the house??  Goal for next week - 3 more!