I am SO thankful that God gave me the strength to get through the last couple of weeks!   I needed a lot of motivation to get through it all!

I was drowning in clutter. We constantly have had too much "stuff" in this house...things that didn't have a place.  Things that I just had to stick here and there and hope that it would not look too bad. I wondered to myself, "Why am I hanging onto all of this stuff? It is causing me nothing but grief.  Is this item really worth all of the grief?"

I finally made the decision to get rid of many, many things; more than I usually get rid of in a deep cleaning week.    I went through Bonnie's room, as I talked about earlier, cleaning it out thoroughly.  She has maybe two plastic buckets with toys, and some stuffed animals too large to fit in a toybox, and that's it now.   

Her clothes were the main problem. She had so many clothes it was unbelievable.  I didn't even realize they were such a problem until I finally faced it.   No girl needs over 100 different outfits...(and it may have even been more than that, for all I know). Almost all of them were hand-me-downs that I had received from friends with little girls.  Most of them were such nice clothes, and it was difficult to get rid of them, but I knew that it was too much to ask Bonnie to clean her room when it was so difficult to know where to put everything.

The same thing happened in Caleb's room, and I have been going through little by little getting rid of stuff in there. Does he really need 27 plush dinosaurs?  Does he really need 7 toyboxes full of toys? 

I want their rooms to be empty, when this is all done.  And I do mean, completely empty, with maybe the exception of one box or drawer of toys. I'm planning to hopefully have every toy they own in a box (hidden away from their sight in a closet, but easy to access) so that they will have to ask for the toys they want to play with, and when they're finished playing with them, back in the box they go.    I think that will make our lives so much easier.  Plus, it will make each toy much more fun for the kids- when they constantly see them laying in the bottom of a toybox, or on the floor somewhere, those toys lose their "fun"....but if they're stashed away where they can't see them for a while, then they open the box and see them- it'll be like a "new" toy again, and it will be much more fun. I've already seen this working, even though it's only been a few days.   And it's been a burden off of my shoulders.

I have already noticed a very positive change from the kids having less in their room.  I notice them using their imaginations more.   I think that too many toys starves a child's imagination.   The kids have been playing so much more contentedly, with fewer things to distract them. 

And remember those boxes I blogged about the other day?  I have every single one filled with different things from around the house- and they are stacked neatly in my sewing room now. I have maybe 3 or 4 boxes filled with different toys, but the rest I used to fill with fabrics from my sewing room, homeschooling books (we have hundreds and hundreds of those in this house), etc.  Each box is numbered and has a short description of the contents on the outside of it.

I even bought a notepad and recorded every thing that is placed into each and every box. This was time consuming, but I got everything recorded, to the last detail.  Each box's number is recorded along with it's contents.

Now, when I want to know where a particular homeschooling book is in the future (many of these books are not going to be needed till later on), I can just look in my notebook and know exactly where the item is. It is wonderful!   Before, I had no idea where each book was...I kept saying, "I wish I knew where such and such book is", but there were so many books stacked in different places around the house, it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack!   This is much simpler, and now I have peace of mind!

I am going to be buying more boxes. I don't know what I'll use them for just yet, but I know there are many more things I can do with them.   I have never been an organized person, but I'm learning, little by little, day by day.

I know that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.