Needing to Purge

It's the new year and I always want things to be different, you know, new year's resolutions and all, but it's been an entire year now since I began the purge (meaning that I'm trying to downsize and get rid of things I don't need). In the beginning, it was easy, my sweetie was out of town and I made a concentrated effort to throw away a bunch of stuff that he would never miss.

It was all so liberating! So I got rid of a few more things. Since we had new Christmas things, no one really seemed to notice, that is until they went looking for some obscure kitchen gadget or the gigantic pile of aprons I had spilling out of the lowest kitchen drawer.

Drama Queen is an apron girl and when she pointed out my secret, suddenly everyone began noticing and complaining about something here and something there. But I kept on, going through one room at a time, attempting to declutter. After a while, it became evident that our house was gradually getting cleaner and my sweetie decided it was time to start sprucing things up to go with our new look.

You know we got most of the kitchen remodeled and most recently he has been working on the bathroom that is very nearly finished, but I will show that one next week. The latest has been the little kids' rooms upstairs, and both of them have been completely remodeled. This bookshelf in the girls' room is my favorite, but the kids love the new carpet and newly painted walls.

I promise I am going to show you everything when it is finished, but right now I have been busy sorting, sorting, sorting... I told the kids they can't take anything back into their bedrooms until it has been approved by mom, so it has taken us pretty much all weekend and we still have tons to go. I have been discarding books, trying to get my kids with little ones to take over the picture book collection since Baby Doll has mostly outgrown them.

Then today Crafty started freaking out a little about her Sterling Scholar Portfolio which is due on Friday (yeah, I know, nothing like putting it off...). So I spent most of my day sifting through scrapbook boxes, looking for certificates and other evidence of all of her hard work over the last 4 years to earn this honor.

I'm feeling that huge need to purge again... tell me, do you give your children their scrapbooks when they finally settle into homes of their own? Right now, I have shelves and shelves of them and I'm thinking maybe it is time to send some of them off....