Clean Sweep

Well, the holidays are over and my new year plan is to do a clean sweep of our house, room by room, including the garage. My husband, Jim, and I started by moving a side board out of an inset in our living room and creating a built-in cabinet that holds all of my papercrafting materials--stamps, papers, punches, embellishments, tools, projects, etc. It is an awesome space--it works out to be about 56 square feet to a depth of 2 feet. It's almost embarassing to have so much stuff. All of the items were stored in the home office or spare bedroom. My goal is if it doesn't fit in the cabinet, then I can't keep it.

There was a side board in the inset that was moved into the dining area. We eliminated a few things out of the side board, but one great advantage has already been realized. Because the side board is nearer to the kitchen, I have actually used my china twice since moving it! Who knew?

The next project was to open an access point on the living room side of a kitchen cabinet that was not very useful. I'm afraid I called it the cabinet "from H@##" because it was impossible to reach the items in the back corner and the opening was so small. With the new opening, I can use every square inch.

On to the office...now we are really talking about a mess. We emptied everything out except the furniture and it is truly amazing how much "stuff" I had managed to cram into one small room. There was an L-shaped desk, three 2-drawer filing cabinets, one 4' x 6' bookcase, three stacking shelving units, four 4-drawer storage boxes, three rolling storage units, a keyboard, a small roll top-type desk. We sold the L-shaped desk and one filing cabinet. The bookcase is moved into the closet. Now I'm going through everything to see what I can "give up". I want to finish within the week. Jim is painting while I am sorting. I have actually moved a few things into the closet. I have a fairly decent pile of things I'm letting go. Perhaps there is hope for me.