That sixth move landed Jeff and me in the house on Athens where we spent four and a half years.
(Okay, so I couldn't find a picture of the house. But look at the cute baby sitting by the daisies in front on the house! And for you folks with Athens knowledge, yes, that is a scenic shot of Huddle Tire in the background. We had a house with a view!)
While we were there with got Pru, we got married, we got Max, and, yes, Ree was born. When it finally came time to leave that house and move to North Carolina, I let go of all my previous hording tendencies. I PURGED. We still had a great deal of college-y furniture, and it was gone since it was cheaper to replace Wilmington than to move it. My boxes and boxes of books went until I was down to a single small bookshelf work of reading material. I cleaned out my clothes, some of which I had personally worn in the 80s. It was time to let them go. We had a yard sale. We made two massive trips to a dumpster. We donated and donated and donated. I put stuff on freecycle. I even took an entire carload of broken appliances to a charity that accepted them. (No, I have no idea how I ended up with an entire carload's worth of broken appliances. But, hey! I found a place that would take them! My inner hippie was so excited!) About the only things we moved were wedding presents, dog gear, and baby gear.
I vowed not to let that much clutter build up again.
And I mostly have. Since we've lived here, we've had a couple of yard sales, and the kids' clothes and toys are routinely given to friends and co-workers or sold at the local Mother of Twins Club sales. But apparently I have not been good at purging the non-kid oriented areas of the house. Last fall I made it a goal to get rid of the equivalent of two diaper boxes (Yes, I measure in diaper boxes. For all you sane people, think paper box.) of stuff each week. And I did from Halloween until almost Christmas. Sadly, though, it quickly occurred to me that my efforts weren't really showing. I did a final purge over Christmas break and got rid of about 6 brown paper bags of clothes, shoes, and purses from my closet, but I had a feeling there was still a lot to be done.
I didn't even think about cleaning out for months, but I randomly started purging again last week. I decided to just work 15 minutes a night on the days I go to work. The part of me that likes to tackle big things was very disappointed by this - progress is slow at 15 minutes a day. On the other hand, the part of me that really didn't feel like doing it by Wednesday and Thursday evenings was grateful that I only had to do it for 15 minutes (and I always ended up working longer than I had planned so I could finish what I started). I ended up liking it so much, I kept it up on Friday and Saturday too. So far I've cleaned out the drawers and cabinets in my bathroom, the top of my dresser, and the extra dresses from Ree's closet.
Some of the "treasures" I found include:
- Cards from Leon and Mike's 3rd birthday. I felt bad...until I found the cards from their 2nd birthday.
- Magazines from 2009.
- Crest Whitening Strips that expired November 26, 2008. Given the expiration date, I am assuming I actually purchased them at Athens Walmart and have now dragged them to 3 different houses.
- One bathroom cabinet contained: 1) an entire bag of trash, 2) a bag of Christmas lights, and 3) a bag of decorations for a Christmas wreath. I have no idea why any of this was living under my bathroom sink. (Or, to quote my wonderful and lovely husband, "How does this happen?????")
Does anyone else get crazy cleaning urges? Does anyone else even let their house get this out of control?
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