Deconstructing

The holidays are officially over at our house.  Over the weekend we finally took down the trees (yes, we have two, one for the kids' ornaments and one for the nice ornaments, lol) and all the other decorations.  We put away the stockings and the advent calendar and everything else that gets us geared up for Christmas and Hanukkah.

Charlie did an amazing job cleaning the garage, recycling a ton of boxes and reorganizing a bunch of other things.  You still can't park a car in there, but that's just not meant to be.

The leaves are finally off the trees and so we raked the lawn.  After all these years I still find it weird to rake in January, but if you do it before then you just have to do it again because either all the leaves aren't off the trees yet or everybody else's leaves blow into your yard.

We're back in our routine, but all I want to do is purge.  Charlie cleaning the garage has inspired me to get stuff out of the house.  We have three coffee makers, two blenders and a bunch of other stuff we never use.  We need to simplify and streamline and declutter.  It's so bad, that I asked my mom to get me a book for Christmas called "The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Living Guide" and then had a panic attack a week or two before Christmas because I thought I already had it.  You've got a serious problem if you have two copies of the same book on how to be a minimalist.  Luckily, it was not a duplicate.

So that's the goal for the next few weeks.  Fun stuff like cleaning out the closets, getting rid of things we don't use and don't plan on using and push back against our urge to keep everything.  When two pack rats marry it is not a good thing.  It's not Hoarders, but if I had a different personality type this house would look very different.

It will be fun, it will be great, it will be and adventure.  As much as throwing out a ton of crap can be an adventure.