Simplify

Over the past couple of weeks I have devoted almost all of my free time (ie: when Emmett is asleep) to cleaning out every room, closet, cabinet and craft bin in our house. You should see our house now. Wait. Actually, I hope you don't because it is still full of the stuff we are getting rid of, only it's out in the open now. In the corner of our kitchen, against the wall of our bedroom - yes, things are looking worse before they will look better.

People who know me well will surely agree that I am an organizational queen. It is one of my strongest and probably most annoying qualities.  I have organized so many things this past week, but I wanted to share two examples with you to give you an idea of the kind of madness that envelops my otherwise normal mind. ONE: I organized a shoebox full of thread that was jumbled together into a tangled heap into a thing of beauty. Imagine Ziploc bags separating different hues of colors - a beautiful rainbow of organizational insanity if ever there was one. And TWO: I organized our junk drawer. And not for the first time. Who am I kidding, I organize the drawer at least once every 3-6 months.  I am sick.  Sick.

The whole thing started when I received a mailer about an organization here in middle TN that needed donations and offered a pickup service.  Donate our unwanted items without having to load up my car and do it myself?  You can bet that I went through my closet with reckless abandon!

And honestly, this has been one of the best things for me.  It gave me a project to do in my free time (now that the holidays are over I'm not crafting too much), which is always good for my morale.  And it has helped me to realize one of my personal goals for this year: simplification.

I like simplicity, yet our house is full of things that we don't need.  Things we haven't used since we moved over two years ago.  So I took action and I'm happy to say that I have a ginormous pile of things to donate.  It feels good to give to people in need.  And maybe it makes me a bad person, but I feel even better knowing that those things are gone and won't need to be sorted through in another 6 months when we pack up and move.

So I am calling the pickup service this week, but I think I like this new lifestyle of paring down and simplifying.  I did a little makeover on the blog, as you've probably noticed.  It's different.  It's simple.  And that's my 2012 motto.