When we moved our stuff into the house the week of our wedding, we realized we had a slight problem. There wasn't enough room in our closet or bedroom for both our collections of clothing.
Now, part of this problem was not having a dresser and that was easily solved when my family gave us one. But the closet was still pretty small and we had boxes of clothing to unpack. When Ben moved home in September, we just packed up his clothes without sorting them; and though I'd sorted mine, it'd only been a quick job before everything was folded away in boxes and brought over. We initially put the boxes and tubs in Grandma's room; but as soon as she came home those had to go somewhere and that "somewhere" ended up being our bedroom. It was actually kind of funny because our bed looked like an island of settled neatness in the middle of a storage space. Over the past week, it's become my mission to get rid of all the boxes in our room; and not only get rid of them, but have everything in them have a place. We bought an interesting device from Walmart that hangs on the original clothes hangar in our closet and extends down with another rod beneath so that our closet space is doubled for short things like pants and shirts and skirts. Then I started unpacking and sorting one box at a time. We had Ben's old dresser downstairs and decided to fold up and store all our summer clothes, since rotating seasonal clothing would save at least half our space. I ruthlessly went through and got rid of things that were too big or too small or never worn or even (in the case of a pile of Ben's socks!) missing parts. We filled a large tub with things to donate, made some choices on what should get folded in drawers and what should get hung in the closet, utilized the clothes' storage rack that had a lot of Grandma's things in it downstairs, and finally got everything taken care of. I unpacked the last box yesterday. The way our days have been going, any project like this usually takes days to accomplish but I feel really good when it's done. Order is gradually emerging from the piles of things that were lying around the house and things are more and more under control. This is important, because with all the changes it was sort of like the straw that broke the camel's back to have no place to put things away that they really belonged in! Not to mention having to climb over piles of boxes to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I was just waiting to really take a tumble over one of those. Next on my mental list: I REALLY want to get all the doorjambs in the hallway painted. Some are new and some are heavily patched and repaired, but all of them need finishing. Right now they still give the impression that things are unfinished and out-at-elbows. And the more settled and finished things are, the more like home this house becomes and the more peaceful everything feels.
Bonnie
1/10/2012 11:15:57 pm
Always feels SO GOOD to get a huge job like that done! And the place feels so much nicer with all the clutter gone!!
Lauren
1/11/2012 02:55:36 am
It sure does!!!!!
Mary Kay
1/12/2012 09:34:08 am
Yeah!!!! It is fun for Katherine and me to read all your goings on!
Lauren
1/13/2012 03:49:19 am
Isn't that very exciting, too? Comments are closed.
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Author: LaurenWife of Benjamin and mother to two wonderful little girls who are getting bigger every day. Enjoys writing down thoughts and discussions we are having within the family and sharing them with whoever is interested in reading. CommentPlease don't be shy! If you're reading the blog updates, we'd like to hear what you think. Click on the "comments" link to send us a note.
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