Cleaning Clutter Update

Through the construction, I have continued to be dedicated to cleaning my house and clearing it of clutter. I haven't been as diligent as I was in the beginning, but in no way have I wavered much. I decided to trash Oprah's emails because frankly they weren't helpful and instead, go straight to the source. I got Peter Walsh's book from the library, (and put it on my amazon wishlist for those of you looking for a last minute gift for me) where he outlines his plan, step by step, for how to get your house in order, clean and clear of clutter. Believe it or not, clearing clutter from every room in your home is step one. What in the world is step 2 going to be, because step one literally took me a good 2 months and I was fairly diligent. I'm excited to see and start doing it.

On that note, like I've said before, step one was clearing clutter from every room in the house. Wanna hear something completely unbelievable???? So far John and I have donated (we haven't really thrown much away) 16 kitchen garbage bags full of stuff to the Good Will!!! UNBELIEVABLE that we've been living with 16 bags of things we don't need. Now, I feel I need to justify myself here because when I mentioned this to some friends, out of the corner of my eye I caught them giving each other looks that said "How does she have 16 bags of stuff to give away-she must be a messy, dirty, pack rat." Nope guys-sorry to disappoint you. I am not a pack rat at all. I am not a keeper. Every few months I go through things and purge to my heart's content. Our house-if you've seen it-while messy is not overwhelmed with clutter and pack-rattedness. No way. I am not a compulsive shopper. In fact, I consider myself on the low end of normal. I see something I like, I might buy it-like a normal person. I see stuff and think "that would look nice here" or "that would solve this storage problem here" I don't just buy stuff to buy it. I'm careful with money and careful with my purchases. Still, I have 16 bags of things to donate. And here's an idea of what that stuff is-

-Table cloths that don't fit my table anymore, and I can't use because kids will be pulling on them for the next 3+ years but I kept them in case I needed them for a special occasion.
-Beads I bought for my doula business, which I don't do anymore, never used, but kept in case Anne wanted them when she was 5 years old.
-Books (LOTS of books-2 moving boxes worth) that either haven't read in a long time, never will reread, or never will get to reading but kept, "just in case".
-Kitchen gadgets and gifts I've never used but kept because they were gifts and again "maybe some day". We have more than enough mugs and glasses-lots of these went because frankly 2 adults don't need 30 mugs.
-Christmas decorations I haven't used in years, but got thrown into the box and forgotten about.

See, I'm not a packrat-just a normal person who has let clutter build up.

Anyway, that's the cleaning update. I am so happy I've found this book a system that's worked for us so far and more importantly that I've actually done something about this mess and clutter.