How Our Home is Handling It's Less

Hey Everyone! Wow, how is it that we are almost at the end of the summer!? My kids head back to school next week and are both actually very excited! My son is beyond ready to start Kindergarten and my girl is excited to see her friends!

Me? Yeah I am excited too!

So, on another note! The kids were gone those 2 weeks to visit my parents and it went by far to fast! BUT, we had such a smashing success and they had a wonderful time!   Since their return I have sold some more furniture and they haven't noticed anything a miss. They actually were very excited to come home to clean rooms and dressers that shut!! My son was excited with the move around I'd done to his room, creating more room to play.

We ended up stopping over at Ikea in Vancouver, on our way to get the kids from my folks, and grabbing some new more realistic storage solutions! An awesome coat rack for the entry way which I am so excited to have for coats and backpacks! And a storage system for legos! Very exciting! (Check out my pictures of these two great additions below!!)

The BIG items I have sold since the garage sale are two dressers and a cabinet. One of the dressers was mine, and since decluttering half my closet, I didn't need the giant anymore! The second was my son's dresser. It was HUGE and so not needed for his bedroom size. I am on the look out for it's replacement to fit inside his closet, like his sister's. This allows for so much more floor space to play and create. I am so happy with the changes! The amount of time it takes to tidy is so amazing and I don't feel the overwhelm looming anymore.

Now, I am not saying that my life is suddenly perfect! Actually, having the space in the house has now brought space in my day, and in turn I have more time to think. And I, instead of having my time auto filled with shuffling my clutter around, am having to make decisions on how I'd like to spend my time. So I am actually beginning to time box, very loosely using this term for now.

Another HUGE change for me right now is, I don't want to run away from home due to the overwhelming clutter crazy! I actually want to be at home for the first time in years!  I choose to be at home where as in the past, I would take any out to be away from home. I am enjoying my living spaces now. I don't look around and think about all the things I should be doing to the space, I can just enjoy it. A completely new experience!

You may think I'm crazy when I say I enjoy cooking. BUT in the space I had before, I would have to dig to get things out and so it all became very much a chore! Now I look forward to cooking in my kitchen with far less to move and shovel to get at the items I use almost daily. The major clutter I have right now in the kitchen is my pile of zucchini from the garden! SO MUCH!!! It has been a great year for it! But other than that, I am trying to do something with everything that comes into it e.g.: mail, groceries, bags, receipts, dishes, etc. Everything has it's place and goes there before I am done and ready to move onto another thing. Again- not perfect, but it's getting there!

I still have a road ahead for more decluttering. I have a couple locations I am wanting to tackle next month. The garage for one. And the remaining of my craft room. But my plan is to have my two monkeys firmly in school before I try to really tackle those. The garage just makes me clam up, so I will be taking that space one bin at a  time. Even contemplating the idea of bringing the bins inside a couple at a time and going through them in our basement rec room. That way I can focus and not see the pile of bins looming before me.

Yep, I think that's what I'm gonna do!