Clean and Purge

I did something on Saturday that I've been dreading for a long time. A LONG TIME. I sifted through dozens of boxes, still mostly packed from our move three years ago, deciding what to keep and toss. The bulk of our currently unused belongings (dishes, board games, sewing supplies, Christmas decorations) were just thrown into the master suite because we had nowhere else to store things while the rest of the house was under construction. Then we started adding tools and building materials that we weren't using onto the pile too for lack of another place to put them. It got to be quite a disaster in there as more and more things were added over time.

This above photo of the master bedroom shows only half of the mess, I'm embarrassed to say. There were more boxes piled in the master bath (located to the right of this photo) as well. This cleaning project was long overdue anyway, but now that we're working on that side of the house it was imperative that we have room to actually work instead of tripping over things.

We sold an entire pickup truck full of leftover hardwood flooring on Craigslist over the weekend, and clearing that out helped greatly. And after much sorting and sifting and sweeping on Saturday, the same room now looks like this:

The floor is visible! I still have some organizing and donating to do among what's left, but at least we know everything in the handful of remaining boxes is worth something to someone.

I was so exhausted from the day's efforts that I took an epic 3 hour nap the next afternoon and S forbade me from doing anything resembling work for almost the entire remainder of the weekend. But it felt good to get rid of some worthless things that we were hanging onto for no reason (how many scented candles does one family need when burning them makes us sneeze?), as well as to finally find some of the super useful things that we've been missing.

Interestingly, the "other" side of the house is starting to feel like it's actually part of our home now even though nothing is finished over there yet. I like that feeling. It's about time!