Clearing Out

I have been teaching (out of the house) less these days, which isn't great for my wallet, but has been good for the house.  After realizing we've lived here for eight years (EIGHT! I still find that hard to believe, since I've never lived anywhere for eight years in my life before.) I decided I needed to do some purging.

I'm very lucky that we have a large kitchen, with many cupboards and drawers.  Unfortunately, that also means that we've allowed them to fill up. I had 6 "junk" drawers in my kitchen!  I emptied them one at a time this last week and threw out tons!  Then, I emptied 4 cupboards and re-arranged the items.  I still need to re-arrange a few more, but the ones that are done look great!  I emptied my towel drawer and got rid of all the bibs (nobody wears them around here anymore!) and sets of 4 napkins and placemats (we're firmly a family of 5!)

This purge also helped motivate me to empty Lydia's room.  That room had been our office since we moved into this house, and it had become a catch-all.  Over the summer, Bo worked diligently closing in our back patio to make an extra room so that we could give Lydia her own room. He finished a couple months ago, and we moved into the "new" office, but that left a mountain of crap in the "old" office. I finally stopped calling it the "old" office and began calling it "Lydia's room" which seemed to switch something in my head and I was able to clear it out (well, except for the closet.  That still has to be done . . . )

Bo patched all the holes this past week and we let Lydia choose her paint color.  It was a toss-up between pink and purple -- but a very pale lavendar won out in the end.  Today is painting day -- tomorrow is carpet cleaning day -- and if all goes well she'll be in her own room by the middle of the week!

We have a toddler bed that we picked up years ago for free that was white iron.  It's simple, but cute.  Bo spray-painted it a pale pink this week, so she'll also be moving out of her crib and into a bed.  It's time, but it's also a little bittersweet.


For the first time in 9 years, we won't have a baby's bed in our room. Even when the boys had their own room, we had toddler beds in our room so they had someplace to sleep when they came in during the night. It worked for us as a family, but I confess that I rarely admitted it back then.   A couple months before Lydia was born, we got rid of the toddler beds, but moved in her bassinet and changing table.  When she grew out of her bassinet, we built her crib in there.


There's so much more de-cluttering I need to do around the house, but what I've done feels good. If only I can keep up the momentum!