Pre-Spring Cleaning

This week the weather is warm and beautiful.  Sixty-five and sunny with bright blue skies.  Would you believe it's the first week of March?  In like a lion?  Not this year!  With Spring just around the corner, I'm itching to put the weird Winter behind me and with it the closed up dusty house that we're living in.  This means SPRING CLEANING!!

Now if you know me well, you will know that I am not a gifted housekeeper.  I do not wander around my magazine perfect home with a mircofiber dust rag in one hand and Windex in the other.  My house is VERY lived in.  I wander around this little Cape Cod and wonder why the dust bunnies are obscuring the stairs and then realize it's been THAT long since I vacuumed.  I've never done a real "Spring Cleaning" before, but this year is it, but it won't be easy!

The problem is that I can't just break out mops & buckets, lysol & clorox and just get the job done.  We have too much stuff for that.  Every counter, drawer, and closet is full.  If left to my own devices I'd probably end up a hoarder.  Because of my pack rat tendencies part of my Spring Cleaning this year will be to declutter/decrap various closets, drawers, nooks and crannies.  This phase is pre-spring cleaning.  It's the purge.

I'm trying to be logical and reasonable when gathering items to trash or donate, but it can be difficult at times. My old clothes are especially hard to get rid of (I'll get all introspective here) because it's like letting go of my past.  I guess it's comforting to hold onto my old jeans from back when we were first married and I was slim and felt great. Looking at a dress I wore is like remembering a day when I wore it.  But the reality is that when I get back down to that size again (workin' on it!) I won't want those jeans or that dress.  They're out of style.  They're pretty worn out.  I'll want to shop anyway.  So out they go.

It feels good to load all this stuff into the car to drive it to the donation center.  Tons of stuff I've been holding onto for years.  And what for??   It feels good to move on.

There is another benefit of all this purging...we will be finishing the basement!  It's a pretty huge project and will be broken out to about a million posts to give info on how things are going, but I'm definitely excited!  The work down there can't really begin until we have the space cleared out. Wish us luck!