A year or so ago I was following the blog The Year of Less. I probably found it through one of my organizing blogs I follow. Any-who, I was happily reading along when the blog came to an abrupt end, but I still read through all the old posts for inspiration. That's when I realized this blogger got her inspiration from a book called "The Joy of Less" which I promptly bought, promptly read, and promptly loved.
As I read the book I was often inspired to get right to work. I did a decent job of purging my kitchen a few months ago, then of course you remember the garage that I never updated you on. (It's wonderful though.)
In fact I loved the book so much that I off handedly suggested it to my book club. They voted on it and added it to the read list. While I was on vacation I missed last months book club but found out the next book is in fact, "The Joy of Less" and I'm hosting. Yeah, I love hosting! Yeah, I love book club! Yeah, oh no.... I need to have less stuff before people show up at my house!
Nothing like hosting a group of friends over to talk about having less stuff to poke you in the motivator. (And no I can't not exactly tell you where my "motivator" is located).
Problem was, A) I was on vacation at the time, hard to purge when you aren't home. B) I only had five days between getting home from vacation and heading to IL for a family visit, and C) only four days between leaving family and book club! Yikes!
I was able to get all of the boys clothes sorted, reorganized, restored, and relabeled before heading to IL but they have yet to make it into their final resting place,aka,the garage.
Todays spark of inspiration came from the fact that a friend is having a garage sale at the end of the week and invited me to drop items off. What a perfect opportunity! I remembered seeing a few items in our board game armoire that we never use so I thought I start there.
First I took before pictures and prayed the kids would stay occupied. Here's the before pic. You can tell things are often just thrown inside and doors quickly slammed hoping nothing falls out. I bought this armoire on Craigslist this past winter by the way....
Second I emptied the armoire out and started to sort out items in my room, which was thankfully clean.
Third, I merged a few things to save space including making preliminary plans to make these beauties I found on Pinterest a while ago. By the way my, 'preliminary plans' consist of me asking Mr. Sloth to make them this week and him saying, "OK."
Next I reloaded all the keep items back into the armoire in an efficient order, ie, we probably won't be doing the Christmas puzzles for a while so they went on the bottom.
It took me an hour total. And that included breaking up some fights, changing two sets of batteries on toys the littles wanted to play with and helping King with puzzles he hadn't done in a while.
This is my toss pile as I won't need these boxes anymore.
This is my garage sale pile from the armoire alone.
I normally just drop items off at charity instead of garage saling, (It's a word. Don't judge.) but Mr Sloth has it in our marriage contract that I am never to have a garage sale. But our contract doesn't say I can't sell items at someone else's house...
Whatever, if any, money I get from the sale will figuratively go towards a new dresser for our bedroom and new shelf for the homeschool room.
Whoa......whoa....whoa...."Did she just say she's buying more stuff? I thought she was getting rid of stuff?"
Hold your horses.
I'm actually selling both our dressers because I think they are unnecessary, especially since I've gotten rid of so many clothes, and I'll replace them with one dresser. This way I can also bring our rocking chair back into our room as it doesn't get used in the boys room and for when we have another baby it makes sense to have the rocking chair in here. As for the homeschool room, it should come as no surprise that we are just gaining books every year. I may sell some at the end of next year but for now, another shelf. I also want to the kids each get their own cubby storage for their own books. Demand had this last year and it worked great but her cubby bin just sat on the desk. We need the space this year with a 3rd grader, K/1st grader, and preschooler......and busy-body toddler.
I'm happy with results, so much that I'm motivated to keep going. I'll spend the rest of this week going through cabinets, drawers, and bins looking for items to sell on Thursday. If I am ever so brave I will go through the emotionally forbidden baby girl clothes.
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