uncluttering

I have been on a mission to unclutter my house since approximately a year ago. Well, to be truthful, I have wanted to unclutter since I had my daughter- that would be (almost) four years ago. What I may have attributed to the nesting instinct of pregnancy back then, I now am embracing as the way I just plain want to live my life. I want to be prefectly clear though- I only need to unclutter because I am blessed with the people in my life.

For example: My Husband loves to cook. This is great because I can count on at least one if not two weekend made-from-scratch breakfasts, plus a pinch-hitter with some good fast recipes when I've had a day that just makes me want to check out of my life by noon. The part where his presence means that I have uncluttering to do mainly has to do with the fridge. My husband cooks in quantities better suited to a boat full of hungry lumberjacks... why these lumberjacks are on a boat, I just don't know. Nonetheless, the Blueberry pancakes are stacked so high that all three of us can usually eat at least two gut-busting breakfasts, the Chicken Curry leftovers overflow more than three Gladware entree containers after we have finished stuffing ourselves until our sweat comes out yellow...and these are only two of his many specialities. So every time I go on a good re-stocking type of grocery trip, I have to purge the dead leftovers out of the fridge. You see, I generally don't eat leftovers. Hubby delights in having enough dinner left to take to work for lunches for a week solid- and usually does. but when those leftovers get pushed back behind the pickles or the eggs, well, you know what they look like when they are finally unearthed. I just pulled 12 gladware containers out of our fridge containing various amounts of leftovers- both recognizeable and unrecognizeable. Usually these fridge purges mean a whole sinkful of smelly gladware that I have to put my hands on. ick.

Then there's my mother-in-law. Good fortune, lots of free time and a roving eye for a clearance rack on her part mean that I have to organize and find a place in my home for a stack of scrapbooking supplies that is literally as tall as I am ( that's 5'6" in case you're wondering). I am a crafty gal, and being a costume designer, have an eye for design and an affinity for creating things. However, I have never made (or even begun to attempt to make) a scrapbook page in my whole crafty life. I did tell her several years ago that I thought I might be ready to try it, but I never did try it after all- not even when large boxes began arriving bi-weekly in the mail from her home several states away, lovingly packed full of the scrapbooking supplies she has been buying for me and keeping since practically the moment Hubby and I said "I Do." Just thinking about all the die-cuts and stickers and sayings and eyelets and ribbons and decorative-edged scissors makes me want to take a nap. I began to put this stuff in a garage sale earlier this summer, but then I got stopped by the voice-of-the-devil in my head that said "...But this stuff COSTS SO MUCH!" So now the whole of it is stacked neatly in my dining room where we walk around it and vacuum around it and occasionally stub our toes on it.

Then there's me. I am a piler. I am also plagued with what I call the "Later Syndrome." This is the uncanny ability to put off even a flick-of-the-wrist in favor of a nap or a leisurely read. The majority of my immediate family is plagued with this, and I am perhaps the vice-president of our club. (Maybe I'm even the president, for all the hours I log to this syndrome, but I surely hope not.) I will make a careful pile of junk mail for a week or three before shredding it all. I will actually clean the house in order to put off work that is due for some looming deadline. My desk is perpetually stacked with several inches of "to be filed" papers and note paper and hair elastics for my daughter. Sitting here, without moving my head, I can lay my eyes on last year's planner, three christmas CD cases ( no CD's inside) and an empty travel-size ibuprofen container... ON MY EVERYDAY WORKDESK.

I have been making an admirable effort to unclutter, though. I have gone through my clothing and gotten rid of all items that are too small or too beat-up for public use. I have purged my shoes down to (almost) only the ones that fit and make sense in my life as it is right now. I have put all our ragged towels into the "Rag Bag" in the basement and thrown out ALL of the expired lotions, medications, and freebies-I'll-never-use. I even went through the basement itself- cleaning, organizing, throwing away stuff and threatening to get rid of my daughter's 3 1/2 years of outgrown clothes and shoes. I have even gone through our bookshelves and purged half of the books we had out. I haven't gotted rid of them yet, though- that will take more willpower than I have mustered so far.

And now for my latest uncluttering. I started another blog when I started this one. the rationale being that I didn't want this to be a "mommy-blog." Well, what happened since then (besides alot of work that kept me busy) is that I would get an idea for a blog and think about posting it, and maybe even write a line or three, but I would never finish it because I then felt guilty about not giving the other blog as much attention, so then I would just go and take a nap or read a book or pout while I had another white russian. (Later Syndrome again!) So I have decided that I am going to condense the two into one. This one. Those who would label this a mommy-blog because there are some blogs on it about my daughter's shenanigans will just have to deal. I am many things to many people, and "mommy" is just one of those. I hope to get more design-centric content going on here, but in the end I refuse to just aimlessly search the internet just to find content for a design site.

I hope this means I write more often, and I hope that you all still find what you came here for.
Now, on to cleaning this desk...