The last year has been an eventful one for me and my husband; last March we finished building and moved into our new house, and in April we celebrated the arrival of our daughter, who is now a busy nine-month-old with a penchant for chewing the coffee table. It was, on the whole, the most exciting and happiest year of our lives.
However...
* moving house makes you realize just how much stuff you've accumulated (particularly when your new, much larger house can't really accommodate everything neatly.)
* babies are stuff-magnets. In addition to the things we've bought, we have also received many lovely gifts and generous loads of hand-me-downs. This is great, and we appreciate it--but the result is that we have far more of some things than we can ever use.
* because the construction of our house was a family affair, we have some end-of-the-road jobs we're still working on, in addition to trying to finish our decorating, sorting, organizing, furnishing, etc.
And so, I am determined to get rid of some of the clutter and excess stuff before it becomes an even bigger task. And I'm hoping that bringing some more order to my life and home will enable me to finish some of the many, MANY creative projects that I've been putting off...which, conveniently, would also clear up a lot of accumulated materials, particularly in my art and sewing room.
This month, I certainly cleared out more than 31 things, although I don't have an itemized list. Here are some of the highlights:
* I sorted through a lot of my daughter's outgrown clothes, packing up her tiny newborn and 3-6 month things (*cry cry*) in separate containers. In the process, I
ditched a lot of hand-me-downs that we were unlikely to use due to staining or just differences in taste. Seeing just how much clothing we had to pack away for a possible future baby made me realize that we really didn't need to be keeping extras. Also, I passed on a lot of baby boy and unisex things to my brother and sister-in-law; my new nephew is due in February, and I realized it didn't make sense for me to hang onto these things
in case we ever have a boy when they could use them now.
Bonus: I tossed/recycled a LOT of department store clothing hangers that were cluttering up the nursery closet.
* I cleaned out a crate of old CDs, getting rid of most of them--including a lot of embarrassing remnants of my teenage years that I can't believe I was still carting around.
* I got rid of some clothing of mine that I hadn't worn in a while.
* When reshelving books after having to move them due to some flooding in our basement (!), I culled four.
* I passed along some kitchen wares that we had never used.
* I sorted out a box of professional resources and teaching materials that I would be more likely to use if they were in my classroom; I'll take them with me when I return to work in April.
* I recycled pounds of paper.
* I sorted a huge bag of photos and tossed at least half of them.
Wow! My life has gotten much more productive as the baby has gotten more mobile and independent. In addition to chucking all that stuff, I also managed to complete a few projects this month, and made some progress on some others. I made aprons for two of my nieces to go with a kids' cookbook that I had given them at Christmas; they went together pretty quickly, and I was very pleased with them--especially when I found some iron-on cupcake appliques to dress up the pockets!
I also knitted a pair of handwarmers for another niece, although I do still have to stitch up the sides of them. In addition, I started work on an afghan I am crocheting for friends, and made some progress on a short story I am writing to submit to
Third Person Press's upcoming anthology,
Unearthed.
Bonus: I read four books this month:
The Habitation of the Blessed,
Cake Boss: Stories and Recipes from Mia Famiglia,
Blackout, and
Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to A Nude Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound.
Now, let's hope this can continue into February...
