Too MUCH!!!

How can I possibly make up for years of ignoring my house in two weeks?? I don't know. But I'm giving it my best shot.

Tomorrow starts my new year...of sorts. This weekend is my husband's twentieth high school reunion. We are planning to attend events on both Friday and Saturday evening. We are also having an old friend come and stay with us for the reunion weekend. And then school starts next week. Which is always a beginning of the year for me.

That said. I decided to take a look around my house and try to view it the way a guest would. It was enlightening. There was stuff EVERYWHERE! Old broken, abused and unused stuff! So last weekend we had a big yard sale. Boy was that a lot of work! 5am mornings trying to get the signs out and stuff put up. Late nights trying to save everything from a downpour and then clean up. Then tending to a house, that though missing lost of stuff....looked like a bomb had exploded.

So, in the last two weeks, I have....scraped popcorn off the beams, primed and painted them, painted most of my dining room and kitchen, moved bought a bookshelf, cleaned a gallon of primer out of the carpet and kitchen floor, bought new dining room chairs, got rid of our supersized junk collecter by the door, cleaned all toys out of our living space, shampooed the carpets, cleaned out the refrigerator, rearranged some furniture, caught up on laundry (and got rid of a LOT of socks), taken a very expensive but productive trip to IKEA with a sick child, down a lot of work on 4us, repainted most of the bathroom, cleaned the porch, rearranged the garden, multiple trips to the goodwill, trip to the dump and recycle center, multiple store trips, and much more that I can't think of right now. I think that makes me Superwoman!

I am vowing though, in light of this....to own much less. We need less than half of what we have. We want to live more organized, calm lives, and we can't with so much stuff. We can't clean well, we can't be hospitable, because we have too much. So....we did a big overhaul, and will again before Christmas. But we are at least a few steps in the right direction.

Now, back to work, less than 24 hours left!