Radical Decluttering and a Move!

Dear Friends,

Last month we moved from our home in the country to a place in town. We're living with our good friends, Kevin and Tuyet, and their two small children until we find a house.

Once we decided to move, we did most of the work in ten days. Though we had rented our house for several years, we had always treated it as though it belonged to us. Our family of seven had put down some serious roots. The basement had become stacked with so much stuff that I felt paralyzed by the thousands of micro-decisions I had to make to get us out of there! But my husband is a wonder; he pulled a horse trailer, a dumpster, and a semi-trailer right up to the back patio and worked tirelessly to help me load things while also running his business and helping our oldest two kids prepare to show their horses at the county fair.

Friends and family came in to assist us as well. My father-in-law asked me why I had to play the piano. Couldn't I have chosen a lighter instrument? Since I joined the family fifteen years ago, he's helped to move it four times!

Now that the dust has settled, I'm staying in a guest bedroom with our four year old daughter. Our tween daughter is in her own room across the hall. My husband and our three sons are in a basement apartment.

Tuyet and I have merged pantries and created a lovely flow of cooperation for all our daily tasks. We cherish our time together! Meals are so much easier to assemble when you can plan and prepare them with a friend. Time folding laundry flies by when you're talking and laughing. If Tuyet needs to sleep in, I can handle breakfast for all the children (and vice versa).

In my room I've created the kind of French style closet I've always wanted with a limited number of carefully chosen high-use pieces. I also have a small pine dresser for essentials. I have two crates of books, one on each side of my bed -- I only packed what I expect to read in the next few months.
I feel much more productive and focused without all the clutter I had before!

The view from my window is park-like. I see two lotus blooms in Tuyet's koi pond. I see a swing that is covered in mature wisteria. A wall of manicured evergreens are paired with purple Rose of Sharon to provide privacy on one side since the neighbor's yard is quite close.

My room is painted clean ivory. There are new aquamarine sheets on the bed. On my dresser I've placed a framed photograph of two pink lilies that my old piano teacher, Sister Cecilia, gave me years ago.  My little girl has two crates to keep her things sorted. Her white porcelain bunny peeps between some potted plants by the window.

I look forward to having a house of my own again; but for now, I'm very happy.

What I'm reading: 

A Child's History of the World by Virgil M. Hillyer. I found it in a box of used books back when we were homeschooling and I'm just now getting around to it. An easy, delightful read. I'll likely read it aloud to my kids in the future.

From where we are now, let us look down the flights below us and listen to the story of what has happened in the long years gone by.  

Virgil M Hillyer


What I'm listening to:

Greetings's From Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood by Claire Hoffman

This book is endlessly amusing to me. I had an aunt who practiced transcendental meditation when I was a child. Because of this, my strick fundamentalist/baptist parents wouldn't let me spend the night at her house when I was young. It turns out that Utopia Park was not a whole lot different than the homeschool cult I grew up in!

It feels good to be blogging again. Hope I can keep things rolling this time.

Blessings,

Adriana

Spring Cleaning With The Classics: Uncle Tom's Cabin

As head cook for the St. Clare family,  Dinah had her own system for cleaning up. Perhaps some of you super-organized people out there won't be able to relate to Dinah's system, but I can -- all too well:

[Dinah] had, at irregular intervals, periods, paroxysms of reformation and arrangement, which she called "clarin' up times," when she would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and closet wrong side outward on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion seven-fold more confounded. Then she would light her pipe, and leisurely go over her arrangements, looking things over, and discoursing upon them; making all the young fry scour most vigorously on the tin things, and keeping up for several hours a most energetic state of  confusion, which she would explain to the satisfaction of all inquirers, by the remark that she was a "clarin' up."

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (ch.18)

I don't smoke a pipe, but the point where Dinah lights her pipe is where I would make a pot of tea . . .

Have you started your spring cleaning clarin' up?

Here's some helpful links:

Living Well Spending Less has a "Spring Cleaning Checklist" free printable. I will be spending the rest of this week on step one. Right now it's still a bit cold in my neck of the woods. When it warms up, I'll be glad to have the organizing behind me so I can focus on dusting and scrubbing with the windows open!

Fly Lady is a free personal online housekeeping coach. I've been following Fly Lady off and on for a few years. She encourages you to start where you are and just take baby steps. Fly Lady was really helpful for me when I was emerging from postpartum depression and my entire house was a disaster. 

I Heart Organizing is for when you have things pretty much under control and you are ready to take order to a whole new level. Sometimes visiting this site is inspiring and sometimes it's depressing; it depends on were I am with things. I don't recommend I Heart Organizing for when you are feeling overwhelmed with chaos. For CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) go to FlyLady.

Have fun! :)