Organization

I have a hard time being organized. I'm a pack rat, clutter seems to follow me about and although I love the feeling of throwing/giving things away, I often lack the motivation to do it.

Not lately, however.

I don't know if it's the exercise, or the start of a new year or the fact that I've been ok with staying home more lately; whatever it is it's making me want to clean, de-clutter and simplify our lives. I'm going through closets, buying baskets and storage bins, throwing things away that I should have tossed years ago. It's therapeutic. There's the clothes that will never fit again, random craft projects, piles of magazines, souvenirs that we brought back from China and are still sitting in our closet. (If anyone needs any chopsticks, let me know. We have many sets.)

It feels nice to be able to walk into a room, a closet, the basement and be able to find something and not trip over the junk that's laying all.over.the.floor. LN doesn't really help, she likes to take things out, strew them all over the house and then leave them there for me to pick up. Which I do. At some point.

We used to be able to have a clean house by default. The Mr. and I have never lived in one place for very long. We like it that way. It's kind of a natural way for us to get rid of sh*t we don't need. After moving out of the house we lived in during college all of our Earthly possessions fit into a 5' x 20' storage unit. And there was still room to spare. I'm pretty sure we couldn't do that again if we tried really, really hard. There's the baby stuff, the dining room table, our bed, LN's bed, various other pieces of furniture that I can't bear to part with now. That being said I'm still fairly confident that we could down size much easier and less painfully than most people. The downside is that I also feel like we don't have a lot of 'nice' things. Our rooms aren't decorated, there's a randomness to our house that some days I love, and others drives me batty. Maybe someday we'll have a space that will match in some sort of way and will feel put together. Until then, we'll just have to make do with the hand-me-down couches and artifacts from our travels.

For now I'm going through the past two years of our lives and cleaning up house. Donations are being made, the recycling and garbage bin are full, we can set our coffee mugs on the coffee table and not be worried that a pile of something will fall off. I'm not sure how long this will last, but it sure feels good right now. There are still little pockets of random boxes in different corners of the house. And one of these days, very soon, I'll get to those too.