Up To Now

As I mentioned, I'm starting this blog a bit in the middle of things. We have actually made some progress in the past couple weeks, since I've come home from New York. So I thought I would catch you up.

I started with our fridge, which was chaos! Expiration dates going back to 2003. Scary. A big problem we had was the shelving - the top and bottom sections were reasonable sizes, but for some reason we had the middle shelf at only one rung tall! Fixing that fixed our entire fridge. Tip: It's getting a little crazy in there again, so I'm planning to organize it differently - top for drinks and jars of food; middle for leftovers and favorites, and bottom for the short or special stuff. What's your fridge system?

Then we took to the living room, a HUGE mess. It looked a bit like the room on the right - you can't even tell what room it's supposed to be! (Image courtesy this site.) My mother and I each went through loads of papers and knickknacks, relics of our pasts really. We recycled nearly all of the enormous, useless cardboard boxes that were blocking our window out to the balcony. Now you can see our couch! (A friend of mine whom I've joked with about this for ages was very impressed when I showed her the couch corner from the front door the other day. No one is allowed inside, you see, until the project is done.)

Once we had separated the "donate" piles from the "save" pile (which I pestered my mom to make smaller until I was satisfied that we weren't keeping any more crap), we took our things to the proper organizations. Goodwill has been a favorite for our clothing. Our local one sometimes gets filled up fast, though. Luckily, there's a Salvation Army right next door!

Today we made our second trip to Books for the Barrios, a local organization that takes toys, books, and school supplies, among other things, to donate to poor schools in the Philippines. I think it's a fantastic cause. Some of my childhood has left us for good, but I'm ok with that if it means a cleaner apartment!

My goal for next week: open and de-clutter the two closets we haven't peeked into for over two years!