Driven to Dristraction

I was doing so well with posting and reading blogs more frequently when suddenly I disappear again. I've been driven to distraction these days with the most obsessive desire to tidy, sort, and purge all the excess, unwanted, unneeded, and unused stuff in our home. I'm almost annoyed by the fact that I have to leave the house to go do other things of value and necessity. Out of curiosity, I weighed the bags that departed our threshold yesterday. 94lbs!! Yes, 94 lbs of stuff that does not need to be in our home any longer. Earlier in the week I passed on all the out grown clothing and foot wear of our youngest child. (Yay, she's finally growing!)

All the winter woollies have been washed, sorted, and put away, or given away until at least November, hopefully! I attacked our basement "closets" to get rid of any extra and long unworn outerwear. From there I went to the storage room. I had to pull out all the spring/summer clothes and get the girls to try them on. It's a huge ordeal and takes many hours to complete. Sometimes I wish their closets were big enough for them to keep everything in them, but I can just imagine the wacky outfits that would start appearing.

All the cardboard boxes hold the off season clothing. It looks like a LOT, but there are six girls to clothe and I hang on to all the sizes until it no longer fits the youngest. That door to the left is my cold storage. It holds all my canning and canning jars as well as hides my peanut butter hording stash. Notice all the pineapple on the shelf to the right of the door. Yes, I hoard pineapple too -- as well as toilet paper and Kleenexes. They however are distributed accordingly throughout the house. :o)

Yup! Even some open space on the shelves. Do you like all our Barba Papas staring you down? They make me smile every time I walk into the room.

Once that was all done, I went through the rest of the room and got rid of more stuff. Old science and history fair projects, long forgotten toys, and knick knacks, etc. Once it was all picked up, sorted, and things were put in their proper places again, I swept the floor and smiled. It wasn't as bad as I thought!

Here is my project for the next week or so though.

This one will be HUGE! How can one family collect so much stuff? If I can get through this mess, I should be less distracted and be able to get back to Blogdomville again!

I'm inspired by a blogging friend at Rambling On. She's on a year long quest to declutter her home -- and doing very well at it I would say.

Is anyone else being driven to distraction by getting their home back in order?