Final days

I had a lot of stuff crammed into the past few days.  We held a baby shower at the house, S had picture day and back to school night, we bought a new car (it's been in the works for about 5 months, but suddenly became available).

So the end of the time frame count is:

Donate - 51 items of kid clothing, 11 pairs of shoes, 2 pool toys, 21 books.

Total - 85 items

Grand total - 314 items.

Wow - considering the initial challenge floating around is 365 items in 365 days, I did nearly that amount in two weeks.  Lesson learned is that a small amount frequently is quickly evident in the neatness and appearance of the house.  Also, digging into infrequently ventured corners will quickly reveal built up dust and grime that you don't seem to notice on a day to day basis.

Now that the weather is starting to cool off, I would like to work on the garage and the basement storage closet.  I also have some chores around the yard, like digging up an oversize bush and pruning all the perennials back.

Day 12 and 13

I worked overnight last night, so yesterday was taken up with resting and napping before being awake all night.  Today, I managed to work on the upstairs hall bookcase.  I had books and items there that I hadn't touched since I moved in 10 years ago as well as C's books that haven't been looked at since he moved in.  Everything was taken down and sorted then the shelves were wiped down and items were replaced.  It's much nicer looking.

Trash - 1 old binder full of really horrid knitting patterns, mostly freebies or ripped out of magazines, 1 worn out cat scratcher, 10 old magazines

Donate - 15 books, 1 note pad, 2 beer steins, 4 knick knacks, 2 board games,  2 canvas beach bags

Immediately took everything to Goodwill and dropped it off.  I'm having a house full of guests tomorrow for a baby shower, so I can't have piles lingering.

Total - 38 items

Grand Total - 229 items

Day 9, 10, and 11

Day 9 was C's birthday, so I took the day off so we could spend all our time together.  We had a lovely indulgent breakfast at Mercantile, drove through the country, and just loafed around the house enjoying our time together.

Day 10 was busy with lots of errands and driving.  I scrubbed the front porch clean and redecorated for fall.

Trash - 1 used up doormat, 2 faded pillows, 1 rusty lantern

Total - 4 items

Day 11 - The morning was taken up by work related jobs - got my flu shot, fit tested for a respirator and learned how to properly don and doff protective gear in case of a potential ebola patient.  I worked on a dresser drawer and part of my closet.  Also have a large "donate" basket I keep in the closet to toss things into as I go that needs to be emptied.

Donate - 10 pairs of pants/shorts and 1 large basket full of other clothing items.

Total - 11

Grand total - 191 items

Contemplating if it's possible to get a total of 365 items out of the house in the next 3 days.  Means I would have to find 174 items in the next two days.  Wonder how much I can dig into the kids' toys before they notice?

Day 8

I'm more than half way through my project and still going strong.  Yay for me.

Last day of work on this block, so headed back to the office and worked on two small drawers.  Tossed several large handfuls of wrinkled paper as well as dried up, no longer sticky mailing labels and a mostly used up note pad.  Most of the drawers need more organization, but it's nice to get the junk and excess out ahead of time.

Donate - 3 packs of sticky labels in various sizes, 1 pack of sticky back velcro, 1 pack of reinforcement labels,  a small blank book, a UV light used to look for secret cat pee, 1 pack of Martha Stewart tags, and 2 small kid toys. ( If I sneak them out gradually, they won't notice, right?)

Trash - as noted above.  It's hard to quantify random bits of paper, so I'll ignore it for now and consider it trash that needed to be trashed anyway.

Total - 10 items

Grand total - 176

Day 7

Another quick day again secondary to working and lack of sleep.  Spent a few minutes on my bathroom vanity while getting ready this morning.

Trashed - 8 bottles and tubes of facial lotions and potions that were either mostly empty or didn't work for me, 2 glass soap dispensers that were pretty, but had stopped working consistently.

Total - 10 items

Grand total - 166 items

7 more days to go.  I have several days off this week so I hope to dig into a few more forgotten corners.

Day 6

I got home from work around 2:15 AM last night and have to be back at work at 3 PM.  Not much energy for more than playing with the kids and straightening up one little drawer in my desk.  It's much neater now, but I should probably get some sort of little boxes or dividers to keep it looking organized.  

Trashed - Handful of wrinkled, non sticky sticky notes, lots of hole punch dots (Does all this stuff count as 1 item?)

Donate - 3 packages of garage sale price stickers/tags, 1 package of book plates, 4 bookmarks, a giant seam ripper from a drug rep (why is it knife sharp?), 1 package of tapestry needles

Total - 11 items

Grand total - 156 items

Day 5 update - it's a quickie

Not a big project today as I have to work and we are finalizing the sale of the Mercedes at noon.  So a quick clean out under the kids' sink, where C and I stashed various toiletries while renovating the master bath 18 months ago.  Haven't looked under there since.  Also managed to hit up my bottom vanity drawer and a shelf in the bathroom storage unit.  I'm a bit of a product junkie so there's a mish mash of hair and skin products as well as expired eye drops.

Trash:  22 various pieces of skin, hair, and eye care with a few worn out makeup brushes and hair clips and a gunked up drawer organizer.

Donate:  a cute but too small makeup bag, hair clip too small for my hair and some sort of bun maker that I could never figure out how to make look right.

Total:  25 items.

Grand total : 145 items

( if I include the Mercedes, 146 ;)  )

Cleaned out the kitchen gadget drawer

It was a disorganized mess and is much better now.

Trashed:  1 broken cherry pitter (kept the replacement that was already in the drawer.  Why didn't I toss the broken one when the new one was bought?)

Donated:  5 random measuring cups.  1 herb chopper, extra turkey baster, extra apple slicer, extra garlic press, extra bench scraper (seeing a pattern?),  pizza cutter, cake layer slicer, 5 random measuring spoons.

Relocated:  10 cookie cutters, mixer attachment, plug for the electric griddle and top for the pressure cooker.

Total:  18 items out of my house!

Grand total ( so far): 120 items.

Day 3 tally

Bedside table

Trash:  10 magazines, handful of random paper scraps

Donate 4 books

Found - 8 containers of foot moisturizer.

Office

Donate - 18 books, an earring holder, leather notebook,  24 pieces of craft supplies (if I itemize, I'll think of reasons to keep them), a Chinese lantern, poetry dog tags, 4 tchotchkes.

Total- 65 items out of my house.

Somehow, removing bags of stuff from the house makes me feel lighter inside and feel less burdened, even if it's stuff that was completely out of sight.

Tally for the day

Trash - 1 pair of sneakers that H has trashed d and outgrown.

Donated - 1 pair out grown boots, 2 sunhats, 1 outgrown party dress, 3 changing table covers, 1 baby blanket, 2 bibs, 2 more packages of pull ups, 3 pieces of clothing I haven't looked at since Detroit.

Total - 16 items.

Wow.  That was just 2 drawers and 1 closet shelf in H's room.  I'll be back in her room as her closet has turned into a dumping ground for things we didn't want in our own closet.

First day of Kindergarten

 September 8 was the first day of kindergarten for my sweet boy.  He marched on to the school bus and only looked back because I called to him.  He was confused for a moment by the bus driver checking his name tag against her list.

 No tears, no fear.  He's such a big kid now!  He had a great day at school.  He got to pick out his own lunch in the cafeteria and go to music class.  Unfortunately, it was too hot outside for them to have recess.

He was all grins when he got home.  We are one week in now and he's still doing well.  He's already fallen into the school kid habit of when asked how his day was, muttering back, "fine".  He has his first homework assignment this week, which I'm sure he'll have no problem with.  He has to practice writing his name, which he already knows how to do.

Clearing out the cobwebs.

 I need to do quite a bit of cleaning and decluttering around this place, so I'm trying to give myself some sort of accountability.  It's quite easy to start a project, cleaning method or organization schedule and quit without to much second thought.  One of the popular methods is to declutter 365 items from your house in 365 days.  My plan is to see what I can do in the next two weeks, reassess, and proceed from there.

So without further ado, here is what I removed from my house today:

Donated:  5 glass/ceramic ramekins, 1 metal tin, 2 books, a Diaper genie, a shopping bag of night time pull ups.

Trashed:  A large hand full of preschool worksheets/coloring pages, 3 baby bottles, a jar of beans used for play, 6 broken toys.

Total  items:  21

We'll see if I can keep this up for more than a day or two.  :)

Spenser's Father's day Ode

New fence to keep the kids in.

Harperism

Last night, Harper told me she wanted a zippy-sack.  Not quite sure what this was, I asked her what it was for.  She said that you sleep in it and it keeps you warm.  I finally realized and confirmed that she meant a sleeping bag.  "Yes, a zippy-sack!" she said.  I told her I had one from my previous camping and hiking days.  She very seriously told me that we needed at least two since there were two children in our family.  She asked me why I had a zippy-sack and I told her that I used it to go camping.  She said that it had been a long time since we went camping (like never since I've had kids) and that we needed to go this summer.  She also told me she wanted a zippy-sack with a dinosaur on it.  She is specific, isn't she?

Impulse buy

Just bought two of these so that I can make some awesome skillet brownies.  They should show up tomorrow, hopefully in time for dessert.

Harperisms

We were getting ready to leave yesterday.  The truck was already started so it could warm up.  As I put Harper in her seat, she immediately jumped up and started dancing around, declaring, "I gotta dance to the music!"  ZZ Top's "Legs" was playing.  When I reminded her that she needed to sit in her seat so we could leave, she admonished me by saying, "Mom, I'm rocking out to my music!"