Cleaning The Clutter

Happy 2016 in January.... the month to get organized and skinny.

Well, the skinny part has not been going well, so instead I've decided to work on the organized, and that's an easier goal it would seem.

All outdoor Christmas lights were taken down yesterday, and then we moved indoors to lighten the load that this house always seems to carry.  Isn't simply amazing the things we amass?

We are a wasteful nation.

The indoor Christmas decorations all went back to the basement storage area.

It's a LARGE unfinished room where my husband has his work bench and lots of shelves that house the things needed to maintenance the inside of our home, like hammers, nails, screws, drills, and anything else a man's heart could desire.

One corner houses boxes of holiday and decorations for the four seasons of the year.  Spring, Fall, Halloween, Easter, Christmas... you get the idea, BUT, some of those items have not seen the light of day, nor come out of their boxes for at least a decade.....

so they are headed either to the landfill or Goodwill, depending on their condition.

AND

there was also a small chair, a small cabinet (painted BRIGHT turquoise from our days in Arizona), and also a small nightstand from about 1943 that belonged to my father's childhood bedroom set.

Just stuff taking up space that hopefully someone else can use in some way.

It's always a relief to let things go, and I don't hem and haw over it much.

Rule of thumb.... if we haven't used it in five years... then it 's time to go bye bye, and I simply don't look back.

Then I moved into my office and started throwing out old paper files from my filing cabinet.  I mean, do we really need the vet bills from four dogs that have been dead since early this decade?  And cards and paper maps from when we moved to Maryland in 2000... just STUFF and MORE STUFF.

If you have a hard time getting rid of things.... DON'T!

Don't hoard things that someone else won't want after you are gone.

They don't want your drawers full of paper stuff so let it go.

I feel so much lighter today.

Oh, and I unsubscribed from emails from stores I never buy from, and websites I no longer read.

So, if the weight loss thing isn't going well..... lighten your life in ways that you can and you'll be surprised how nice 2016 feels.

Happy New Year!!

Woot Woot.