The Great Purge of 2010
Working on clearing out the Sprout’s room has proven to be a much more ambitious undertaking than I initially imagined. I foolishly thought I could simply take out the things that don’t belong in there, and, Voilà! turn it into a baby’s room. Oh, how wrong I was! The thing is… we need to clear space in other places of the house for those other objects to go. What was once just “clearing out the nursery” has evolved into a whole-house purge — from the baby’s room to the garage and beyond! At first I considered having a garage sale, but who am I kidding? I don’t have the time or energy for such things! So in two weeks we have taken 5 CARLOADS of unwanted swag to the Goodwill! Think about that for a second… I know I’ve said it before that we have too much stuff, but I didn’t realize how much of it there was. The sick thing is that even with all that stuff gone, it barely looks like we’ve made much progress! There’s still so much more to go. And then there’s the not-so-small matter of finding a place to put a full-size electric piano. Oy!
The current state of the Sprout's room – we're working on it!
The other side of the room
Someone said to me, “It sounds like you’re nesting!” And, while that kind of comment kinda gives me the rage, I’m going to be honest here… maybe a little of it is nesting, but Mike was the one who initiated the purge — starting in the garage. This massive clean out was long overdue, and the baby coming has been a great mobilizer for both of us; No more lazy procrastination.
Here's what the garage USED to look like a few years ago – Hello, HOARDERS!?
I have to say, it is sooo liberating to get rid of your unneeded stuff; it’s definitely habit-forming. I recently read an article that talked about the psychological aspects of getting rid of stuff. It said to ask yourself these three questions: Do I love it? Do I use it? How does it make me feel? You’d be surprised how easy it is to let go when you go through the exercise of self-evaluation. I’m almost embarrassed to admit the amount of stuff I was holding on to just because it was easier to ignore it.
So we’re making slow progress, but we still have a few months. And I think we’ll all benefit from having a more organized life: Me, Mike and the Sprout.
I’m going to have to keep those 3 questions in mind as I go thru my whole condo purge before moving Ft. Drum this summer. I know the majority of what is in my garage I haven’t touched since I moved into my condo almost 3 years ago so hopefully that should help the purge! Good luck with getting Sprout’s room setup :)
I’ve been planning a big purge too. Our house would seem so much bigger without all the crap. We’re planning on having a garage sale in May with all of our purged out stuff. Our attic is packed with crap. So is our guest room. And the basement. And my office. I like the questions to ask, I think I’ll do that when I go through it all, hopefully it will help. I’ll get Brian on board too. He’s got as much crap as I do. ;)
We also need to purge… I’ve started but lack the motivation and commitment to really get going on it. Good luck!!!
May I suggest getting pregnant as a way to motivate you? C’mon, everybody’s doing it! :)
Tim and I are purging too for our neighborhood’s big garage sale next weekend. It’s SO much work but if feels good to get rid of stuff we don’t want/need! We’re really just cleaning the garage out to make way for more stuff we don’t need! ;-)