Make More Room for Fresh Living

This time of year makes me smile--especially when I am standing in the grocery line reading the covers of the latest magazines.  Every magazine in January/February has ideas for losing weight, redoing your house on the cheap and generally for making fresh starts.

Dear Husbola and I have just completed a room and porch renovation that took longer than the building of the pyramids of Egypt.  Happy with the results, we are combing our home looking for items to use in the new spaces and generally trying to get the house to feel like our own again.  I am trying to think creatively--an antique desk that was in our bedroom is now in the garden room.  A piece of artwork that was in the guest bathroom in now having a fresh start in there as well.

But in amongst all the rooting around closets and cupboards--I am finding an awful lot of dreck.  Stuff that we have not touched in years, and in some cases do not like or want anymore.  Let's not talk about the outdated shoes or that skirt that hits me at the "bad place to hit a 53 year old leg" place.  Some of this stuff just has to go.

So--I made up a rule for 2013.  I did not have to buy a magazine or watch HGTV to come up with this one.  For the entire year--every day--five things have to be sorted and either thrown away, given away, put in our  shop to sell or repurposed in some manner.  That's right--FIVE things.  And old magazines do not count.

But what does count?  Expired bottles of herbs or spices--old underwear that could be cut up for rags--books that will never be read again--VHS tapes of favorite movies but the tape has become too dark for good viewing--tupperware--anything that hits me above the knee-stacks of recipes that I can find again on the internet-you get my drift.  Yesterday I went through 5 drawers and cupboards in our kitchen.  The newly organized space is SO great.  Makes me smile.  Even Dear Husbola is buying into this.  He is reorganizing his desk and a bookshelf--the desk will become workable again and his unusual assortment of memorabilia and treasure is now visible on the shelves.  Looks good.

Antiquer's homes can be cluttered and way too stuffed.  We fill our space with things we love and things we paid too much for and cannot sell--and we are just accumulators.  I am sticking with the "Get Rid of Five" rule.  No backsliding--I promise.