summer project: becoming minimalist

only the beginning

 

this summer we decided to SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY purge, downsize, organize & drastically simplify our lives. finally a dream come true for me! I HAAATE having extra junk & purge often, yet our fam of 5 seems to still always have tons of STUFF. I never seemed to be able to get rid of enough & have never been able to do so on such a large scale. using this becoming minimalist post & many others around the web, as a catalyst I got busy before summer break officially began.

 

I started with the books (& the school supplies that belonged to our charter). we have books in every single room of our house (yes including all 3 bathrooms). i'm not a huge collector, overly sentimental about things, & have no problem letting things go, but OMG our books were hard to go thru & hard let go of. we LOVE LOVE LOVE our books! each & every book has been gone thru, I maaaay have even gone so far as to catalog each title in my ipad & they are pretty much done. but they were only the beginning.

 

after much avoidance & anxiety I've tackled the craft closet supplies. of which the contents took over my entire kitchen & sat there for days (& NOPE no pix...no way!). I completely avoided the storage container mountains full of fabric (I barely even know how to sew...& HATE it), yarn & knitting/crocheting tools (I barely even know how to knit or crochet), scrapbooking & paper crafting supplies (no time...nor any desire anymore)& ALL the other STUFF. for days I seriously ignored the big mass of stuff like it didn't even exist: stress eating junk, taking naps, leaving the house, avoiding eye contact with it by not looking directly at it, etc...

 

BUT this weekend I hit the coffee & the crafting purging pretty hard & got most of it cleaned out & organized. the yarn ball tangles seriously almost killed me. the girls were bummed because I dismantled the little houses they made inside the mountain of stuff (like with different rooms & walls & furniture & cubbies & stuff...that how much extra STUFF we had). 

ok, in my defense (kinda), i'm more artsy, but the girls are pretty crafty they do sew & knit & actually use those supplies for projects, but we did not need it ALL.

 

we have a HUGE yard sale planned with the neighbs at the end of the month. for the next few weeks of the simplifying process (& our summer vacay), my house will be complete chaos & I will be obsessively putting in the time & focus required to achieve this goal. purging & organizing have become one of my all time fave things to do so i'm trying to be ok with it all & bite it off in small chunks as this huge of a project is equally as exhilarating as it is overwhelming.

 

it will all be for the best & i'm sooo super excited for the final outcome. EVERYTHING MUST GO & I cannot wait ...I just hope I don't gain too much stress eating weight in the process!