Declutter

After a fun vacation and the joy of the holidays, it was time to take down the Christmas tree, put our 500 piece puzzle back in the box (it took just under a month to finish), and get back in the swing of things.  Unfortunately the swing of things was absolute chaos.  We had toys all over the place, we could not find simple school supplies for the girls, and we had mountains of paperwork.

Our step one plan was to have the front room/dining room put together so that it is not an embarrassment when we have pop-in guests.  That was not too bad.  It was mostly a function of picking up and evaluating “piles” that seem to mysteriously fill every corner of a room.  This went remarkably well and we decided to do the den also.  This took a little longer as there were a lot more toys and a built in bookcase that seems to attract a host of things we don’t want to lose, but don’t have a place for either.

Finally as much of the downstairs became non-toy friendly, it was time to organize the loft.  Over the course of several hours, we found an incredible amount of school supplies including scissors, glue sticks, pencils, erasers, etc.  We got rid of all of the old markers that no longer work.  We even found all of the Connect 4 tiles.  At the end of the day, we have a reasonably welcoming play area.  We stopped short of purging all of the age inappropriate toys and books, but that can come later.

Unfortunately all of these efforts led to piles of archive stuff that have no home being migrated to the basement.  My man cave is now full on storage.  This is made slightly worse, by my wife setting up her treadmill for the season.  Eventually it will be time to tackle this space as well, but it will probably be after the bedrooms are decluttered.