Nesting

This past weekend was one full of action at the Smith house. Two weeks ago, I started cleaning out the closet in the nursery. It's the middle bedroom that no one seems to remember that we have. Probably because we always kept it full of crap with the door closed, but I digress.

At first, I was taking my time going through all the boxes really carefully. Reading each note, each scrap of paper that I've held on to. As I started trying to make room in the front bedroom closet for some of this stuff, it became apparent I was going to have to clean out that closet too since it was already full of junk (lest not we forget my obsession with keeping "good" boxes). So in the course of that first weekend, I made things LOOK much worse than they had to start with.

The following weekend, I didn't do anything. I stepped over the stuff as I passed through the hall. Yes, I spilled out from the two rooms into the hall. But this past weekend, it had to be finished. I was tired before I started but determined.

Because I had sorted most of the stuff in the nursery closet, it was now condensed down to one keepsake bin and photos - lots and lots of photos. Now it was time to tackle the front bedroom closet. I tossed stuff with an ease that I hadn't had the previous cleaning attempt. A lot of times I asked myself "why did this even get saved?" then I remembered that packing to move consisted of friends and family throwing everything in the house into boxes and into a POD. I believe I even opened a box of trash when we first moved in. Apparently it all looks the same if it's not your stuff, right?

I condensed two large closets to half of one closet - the other half is left empty for guests to hang clothes (novel idea, huh?), with our luggage on the bottom. But the house still looked like a disaster. So we started hauling out the trash and the stuff to be taken to Goodwill. And instantly, we had two rooms again (and an empty hallway).

The only downside to this is now it's very apparent that the rest of the house needs to be decluttered too. It's something I knew, but once you made a dent, it just looks funny until it's finished. That won't even be thought about beginning for another two weeks though. This coming weekend brings house guests and paint for the nursery! WOOT!