Organizing and Cleaning -- Look Out HOLIDAYS, I'm On a Mission!
I started my Organize Holiday Decorations project today. I've got nine (!!!) boxes of stuff out in the garage waiting to go to the Goodwill -- plus a huge pillowcase stuffed with clothes I went through. (And a couple of those boxes are pretty big, too.)
Sister Sue has agreed to take me to the Goodwill with this stuff tomorrow, so I won't be quite buried in it -- or not for long, anyway. Most of the day it was sitting in the family room, making me NUTS! But moving it to the garage helped my sanity quite a bit. (smile)
As I mentioned, some of it is clothing. I have baskets more to go through -- and I really do plan to do more soon. I'd love to get my bedroom in order. That would make me really happy.
Meanwhile, I wanted to go through holiday decorations. This is partly due to the recent situation where I moved a ton of boxes while looking for the 'missing' (HIDING) Colin Kitty -- whom I found under the stairs in the laundry room, in the very back, mind you. He was so crammed behind boxes of decorations that it's a miracle I ever found him (!!!). And had I been less careful, I could have easily trapped him in there, by moving boxes without knowing he was lying behind them.
Plus we're going to spend Thanksgiving at the beach -- and Christmas, too -- so we'll want to take some of our decorations there. So by going through what we have, I can pick out some to stay home, some to go to the beach house -- and the rest to go to the Goodwill! The important part is getting rid of a bunch of it -- while still keeping things we love and that look nice for the season.
I dusted a little (very little) and put up a few things in the family room for Thanksgiving. I have Thanksgiving things ready for the living room, too. I've got less than half (maybe a third, really) of what we'd normally put out, so it feels like I made huge strides.
When it comes to decorating, I want us to have things that remind us of the special time of year and make us smile -- without Marilyn feeling like the holiday has 'exploded' in any given room. I tend to over-decorate (hello... Mom...), which is little wonder, considering how we were brought up (and how sentimental I am). But I'm ready to let go a bit in favor of being more organized and having less to keep put away and cleaned up. As I've said over and over again, we have too much stuff. And it's not fancy stuff -- not even close. So unless it's special to us, there's little reason to keep all of it. (Yes, even stuff that was Mom's. I mean, I have a lot of stuff that belonged to Mom, so I've got that covered many, many times over.)
I ditched the silver (plastic!!!) ball that was Grandma Elsie's today. You plugged it in and it tweeted like a bird non-stop. Highly annoying! No one would want to listen to it and we never used it. But Mom was sentimental about it because Grandma liked it so much. And that's why I kept the damned thing! Ridiculous, huh? It was about time that went out of it. And who knows? Maybe there's somebody out there who is dying to have a tweeting ornament. Right. Hahahahahaha. Anyway, it's off to the Goodwill.
That's one crazy example of what I mean. Some of these decorations are quite pretty, mind you, so they may well find a new home with someone who will enjoy them. But, gee, Charlie -- let GO. Done that today! Ready to do more, too.
Well, I'm (finally) off to color my hair! More soon...