Decluttering

The first week of school has come and gone and already I am behind.  Getting sick for one day puts me off by a week.  I still feel as though I just want to go to bed but that is not possible for this mom.

With the change in status of Benjamin there also comes a new GAL.  Apparently we will have the same GAL who came to our house for Kassi.  My husband was annoyed because he went through our entire house and then wrote in the court documents that our house was cluttered.  This did not sit well with my husband at all. We have 9 people living in this house and the remaining stuff of our adult children who have moved out.  Believe me when I say that when the kids move out they don't take everything with them.  You become a storage facility and laundromat.

So, we are doing a huge decluttering job.  Oh, while doing a small kitchen remodel.  While homeschooling two kids, watching a toddler and taking care of my mom.

I spent a period of 36 hours doing laundry.  Yes, I stayed up all night to finish all of the laundry in our house. From that laundry marathon I added a good three bags of clothing to my get rid of pile and two bags of trash with clothing that was worn or stained.  Emma has finally grown to size 7/8 so all the size 6 clothing gets to go to Goodwill.  We will have no more foster children so no need to store any clothing for possible children.

Funny as it sounds, we also did socks.  We also threw away two garbage bags full of socks.  Yea, two empty laundry baskets! If we could convince the schools to let the kids wear flip flops I wouldn't have such a big sock problem.

We even matched mismatched socks. I didn't realize that there was such a need.  Larissa said that the same brand of mismatched socks had to go together.  I thought that reason for mismatched socks was so you didn't have to match them.

Of course when preparing for an inspection it is necessary to start a very messy job.  Little Man tried his best to help out.

It didn't seem to matter where I tried to hide the hammer, he found it.  I finally found a spot he couldn't get to......

Naturally, that led to much hammering with his toy hammer from his tool bench!

I am amazed at how hard it is to get rid of stuff even when it hasn't been worn or used in years.  I don't think that I am the only person with that problem and there seems to be varying degrees of "I can't get rid of that, you never know when I might need it".  I believe that I am middle of the road but I am working on it. I have been ruthless in getting rid of stuff. I bet that next week I will need something that I throw away!

Any other collectors out there?  Any minimalists?

Tomorrow, I will discuss how school is going.