What I've Been Up To

Have you noticed the "stuff I got rid of" list has been sparse this week? I'm finally done going through boxes upon boxes just for the sake of going through boxes (well, you know what I mean). I spent the first part of this week doing my final organizing in the storage part of the basement. It's now stacked full of "stuff for storage" (otherwise known as Mom & Dad's garage), "stuff for dh to go through", a few half-full boxes that will fill up as I continue going through the rest of the house, both for storage & for freecycle , and some beautifully almost empty shelving units (& a few boxes that will continue to be stored here until we actually move). Seriously, if I'd taken before & after pictures you'd be amazed (& it'll be even more impressive after tonight, when Mom & Dad take another load to their house). But that's not really what I was planning to post about.

Before DH took over our dining room as I went through boxes & piles & my closet and such, I'd been accumulating all "craft stuff" in the dining room (on the floor) and my plan was once I'd gotten through most areas, I'd sort all the craft stuff & organize it & purge it & such. And of course the dining room seemed the logical place for this because (a) I already had my main stash of craft stuff in there (b) it's kind of my "project room" so I'd have the whole table & floor to spread out my sorting on w/o being in anyone's way. And then dh took over the table as his "office" sigh . . . So, it occurred to me that while dh is gone this week, I should really sort the craft stuff & get it out of his way. So yesterday I started sorting, and sorting, but of course, I didn't have the table so I had piles all over the floor under/around the table, and the piles were getting bigger & my original thought that I could sort stuff into shoe boxes became rather laughable (too much of each type of thing).

Then last night while laying in bed, it hit me! See, one of the things I did in the basement this week was to consolidate ALL the empty boxes (& I have tons & tons because you know, I'm a pack rat, and I order stuff for the business & for the co-ops I run, and they come in boxes & of course one never knows when one might need a box for something so I KEEP all those boxes . . . ) ANYWAY . . . I already had a start of a box pile in the front corner of the basement, and I declared it my official "box pile" and moved all the other smaller box piles to that same location. Now, here's where it gets amusing, before I began piling boxes, I noticed a whole stack of plastic storage boxes (that actually have been used most recently for dying clothes & playsilks) at the BACK of the pile of boxes & I briefly thought "maybe I should pull those out where I can get to them before I stack more boxes in front of them" but then I thought "no, I can't imagine why I'd need those right now, they're fine right where they are . . ." So yeah, last night in bed, I remembered those boxes that are now at the BACK of the MUCH LARGER pile of boxes & thought hey, those might be abit too big for most of the categories (ha ha ha ha ha) but they'd still be great to sort everything into & then the ones that are too big I can transfer to something smaller. So today I dug through the mountain o' boxes and got my plastic containers out.

And then I started sorting, and sorting and sorting . . . and the kids whined that they wanted lunch but I was ON A ROLL! And the kids started fighting and I grumbled at having to stop my sorting to break up the fights . . . and finally, I had it all sorted! And you know how I thought those bins would be too big? Yeah, maybe not . . . See how it looks all piled in the living room waiting to be labeled & put away?
And then I DID take a break and feed my children lunch and things like that. And then I went hunting for lids, but found that I only know where a few of the lids are (did I mention these plastic containers have mostly been used as dye buckets, those don't really require lids) and I labeled them all (which was so much easier to do now that it meant pulling a pad of sticky notes out of the Paper bin & a marker out of the Crayons & Markers bin instead of searching the whole house for something that would work as labels & a marker LOL) and carried them down to the pretty empty shelves in the basement and here you have them (the shelf itself will push back against a wall once the piles of stuff to go to storage have actually GONE TO STORAGE). Aren't they nice and organized? Now when my children want to paint, I can find paint (every imaginable kind of paint too!). And when they want to "do crafts" I have a whole bin of craft kits, or if they're feeling really creative (or I am) misc craft STUFF like pipe cleaners & popsicle sticks just waiting for me to pull them out & let the kids have at them. Need glue? I know where it is! I'm so proud of me LOL.

My other project this week was 2-fold. First, I found some of our empty CD cases so I went through them, and the binder of CDs and created a nice big stack of CDs to sell (trying to decide if I want to drag them to a used books/CD store or if I want to take the time to list them all on half.com) leaving only a few cds in the front of the binder. Then I dug out all the girls' DVDS (& a few of mine, but most are theirs) and went through them, and pulled out a few of them to sell (but I'd purged them not too long ago, so not many) but the rest, I pulled out of their cases & added to the binder. So now instead of FOUR BOXES of DVDS, plus a pile on top of the DVD player that wouldn't fit in the boxes I have ONE BINDER of DVDS and CDs Plus a small more portable cd case of cds I'm going to have in the car right now. And there's still more room in the binder! And all the empty cases are stacked in a box ready to go to storage (for whenever I decide I'm ready to sell THESE and need them in cases again).

So that's what I've been busy doing all week, in between feeding kids and playing countless games of Go Fish & Monopoly and reading stories and all the normal fun stuff that is part of my day to day life.