This Is This Week

This week, I went on a cleaning and purging rampage.

Well, maybe not a full blown rampage.

But given some recent life events, I cleaned with vengeance and got rid of a ton of stuff.

My attention was mostly focused on my kids’ rooms, which had seemingly exploded in recent months.

I made my girls’ room beautiful again before remembering to take pictures of the “before” or documenting the process…

We recently redid their room as a joint birthday gift; at some point, I’ll try to recount what that design process entailed!

But after feeling the deep sense of satisfaction and relief of having this room finished and tidy again, I decided to attack my son’s room next – and this time, Sarah and Robyn came by to help tackle the clutter and document the experience!

The Before

It was pretty embarrassing how bad my son’s room had gotten.

Life has been hitting pretty hard in our family in recent months.

Maybe I’ll share more in the coming months, but we have been in it. Health problems, pet problems, car problems, household appliance problems, the death of loved ones…you name it, we have probably been dealing with it in the last year.

So I’ll accept this “before” as the natural consequence of all that upheaval and chaos.

Thank God for good friends and strong trash bags – that’s all I can say.

We ended up pulling roughly 9 garbage bags worth of items out of the room.

Some bags were donated and some were just plain trash.

Items discarded:

• Old broken toys
• Pieces to toys that we no longer have
• Odds and ends – a broken seashell, a handful of gold coins and faux gems from a “pirate treasure” my son had gotten, a pack of dried out baby wipes, etc.
• Stained or otherwise ruined linens/clothing
• A few items missing their matches – socks, a rain boot…

Items donated:

• Some boy clothing that my son no longer fit (passed down to Sarah’s youngest son)
• Surplus bedsheets
• A diaper bag
• Another large handbag
• A lunchbox (as a homeschooling family, we just didn’t need it)
• And a decent amount of toys

This is certainly not a comprehensive list, but thank goodness Robyn’s trunk was empty to take the donation bags and our trash cans could fit the garbage!

The After

Just looking at the room and recalling the experience through these pictures gives me an immense feeling of relief.

What a difference, right?

The beautiful part is that the process cost me nothing.

We already had the furniture, baskets, and organizers. We had just surpassed the inventory that could realistically be well-organized by those tools.

Every time I reduce the inventory in our home, I feel so much more relaxed and unburdened.

If you haven’t given minimizing or just purging and organizing one room in your house a try, I highly recommend it!

This is an excellent stress reliever!