Last Friday I started working on Jack's room as the next phase of project paint.
Then, exhausted, standing in the pantry hunting chocolate, I saw a moth.
I nearly died. I was so tired and all of my inventory is stored in the pantry.
I am still working on the finishing touches for Jack's room (he starts middle school tomorrow!), but the moth problem would not wait.
Two exhausting days later:
Inventory side before.
Food side before.
Side by side.
So, I've uncovered loads of unlisted inventory, Donated a whole car full of stuff, updated shop inventory, donated a whole trash bag full of personal care items and samples that had never been used to the food pantry, and filled the entire trash toter with random who knows what.
I've been doing the same with every room I've painted too. I have not read this mythical kon Mari book, And every year I find the need to own less and less, but this time I have been doing some serious gutting of things we've held onto for various reasons.
We still have a lot of stuff, but it's my dream that every room can be tidy in ten minutes no matter how messy the kids have been that day. I will be bluntly honest and just say it feels like a complete waste of my life to have to spend it cleaning up all the time. (And yes, I make the kids do it, but they have to be managed too.)
Anyway. I'm tired and need a break from it, but it's also an obsessively motivating transformation that's taking place room by room.
P.s. Grant asked me today when I would paint his room. Send reinforcements, or painters, or the goodwill truck, okay?
So you have a pantry large enough for shop inventory AND food? That's so rough :-)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, your after pics look awesome. I love having a clean pantry but hate actually cleaning it.
~Erica
In my church one of the things we are counseled to do is make our home a "refuge from the world". You can interpret that in lots of ways but I always thought of it in terms of my kids. Last night I had an epiphany, though. My husband hates his job and hates the people he works with. He longs to come home and be with his family. Our home is his refuge from his crappy job and the idiots he works with. It seems so obvious but I never really made the connection that I need to make this home a refuge for him, too. I am not the world's best housekeeper and I live with 4 messies so it is fighting a losing battle ALL.THE.TIME but I have been lazy about keeping things clean and organized. I have zero desire to read that book because frankly, I LIKE MY STUFF and don't want to get rid of MY STUFF (although I would happily get rid of my kids' & husband's STUFF LOL) but I realized last night that I need to seriously step it up in the homekeeping department so that this truly can be a refuge for my husband and he doesn't have to keep stepping over piles of old junk ahem "inventory". That was a novel but just something that has been on my mind! So kudos to you for working your butt off and making your pantry so organized!
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