A couple of Posts ago, I mentioned a book study I'm doing, "A Mother's Rule of Life". Going is very slow. We've discovered that everything gets scheduled on Fridays, interfering with our chosen meeting time; Grandparent's Day at school, days off school unexpectedly, Black Friday, Retreats, etc. We've haven't been able to move ahead any in 3 months.
The upside to spending so much time on the same chapter is REALLY getting to work on that area. I put together my "portfolio", my place to keep all my notes and lists, and have that working very well. I mentioned that I've been tackling cleaning out and getting rid of stuff. That's still true. We had a yard sale in October (or was it September) and Don brought down from the attic everything we had stored that we no longer need. I was amazed how many children's clothes we still had. Anyway, I was determined to not put anything back in the attic, so the furniture, clothes, and other items that hadn't sold in the yard sale have been taking up the whole living room.
I finally contacted a friend who said he could use the changing table and dresser for a Retreat House he's trying to furnish. Then my friend, Kelly, took a day and helped me sort and organize boxes and boxes of stuff. We loaded up her van twice with items for Good Will and she dropped them off for me. Then we made a trip to a Second-Hand store and another trip to Good Will. I was left with a box of small items that I wanted to donate to the Kindergarten class at our school for their Treasure Chest, two boxes that still needed sorting, and a few items I wanted to keep.
Yesterday, we bought our tree and rearranged the furniture in the living room so we could fit our tree comfortably in the corner. I still have one more box to sort, but, other than that, the living room is cleaned out. Nothing is going back into the attic.
It's a good feeling to get rid of things that have cluttered our closets, bedrooms, attic, and lives for years. But there's always more to do. I'm just thankful that I can now enjoy the fireplace and want to move my gift-wrapping stuff into the living room so I can wrap to my heart's content while enjoying the fireplace.
Slow progress, but any progress at all is better than none.
