40 Bags Update

So as I've been mentioning recently, I'm tapping into the purifying and sacrificial character of Lent, and trying to purge my home of some non-necessities, while also working on doing the same in my soul :-)


1. A couple days ago, I brought two HUGE boxes of baby stuff to a friend who is expecting. It was great for me to get rid of the things we weren't using, and it was great for her, since she still doesn't have any baby stuff.

2. We now have a huge pile of my clothes and shoes just sitting in a big heap against a wall of the kitchen, waiting to be taken away. And...I should probably figure out something to do with them soon, since my mother-in-law is visiting this weekend...hehe

3. Last night, my project was going through my sock drawers (yes, I said drawers, plural. I had WAY too many socks!). I sorted through all my socks, and put aside about half of them for giveaway. It was tough to have to do, since so many of the pairs are in great shape, and could last me several more years. But I hardly wear any of them. I don't need them, so they just have to go.

The one year when I was a "real" teacher (not student teaching, subbing, tutoring, etc.), I purchased a lot of new dress clothes, shoes, and yes - dress socks. I figured I'd be using those things for a while. I didn't know that the next schoolyear, it would be impossible to find another position. Or that a year and a half after that, I'd be having a baby, and becoming a pseudo stay-at-home mom, and never needing 10 pairs of black dress socks. Anyways, I wear skirts five days out of seven, so I wear tights instead of socks most of the time!

Bye-bye, socks

But I wonder...will thrift stores actually take donations of SOCKS? I shop at thrift stores a lot, and I can say that I've never seen used socks for sale there! So what will they do with them? Just throw them away? If anyone reading this is in the market for some free socks in good shape, let me know, and they're yours.

I've been using the drawer in my bedside table as the main sock storage location (with the excess socks shoved in among my bras!). It was so packed, though, that the drawer was hard to open and close, so I avoided even opening it. So I've pretty much only been wearing the bra-drawer socks anyways. And I would only wear the top pair or two on the pile, wash them, and return them right on top.

But last night, I created a new sock drawer. I emptied out a drawer in my bureau, which just had random clothes in it. Some pregnancy pants and capris (why were these not in the maternity box in the basement?), and a few shirts I had stuck there 6 months ago that I "wasn't sure if I should keep or not." Well, those got chucked too! So now I finally have a sock drawer in the bureau as I should, and an empty drawer in the nightstand.

New sock drawer in bureau!

Empty nightstand! Beautiful sight!

I quickly put a few - just a few - useful items inside it, though. A couple books/prayer books, a reading light, chapstick, and some baby items that I might need quick access to at night (baby Tylenol, saline nose drops, teething gel, etc.).



4. While I was working on all this, my boys were downstairs assembling a cheap metal shelving unit to go over the toilet.

Look at my baby "helping" his daddy!


I asked Tom to bolt it to the wall so that our soon-to-be-mobile baby won't be able to tip it over onto himself.


SO nice to have a location for towels now! We don't have a linen closet or any other appropriate place for them, so they've been stored on the top shelf in my bedroom closet. The stupid shelf is so high that, as I've mentioned before, I have to toss items up onto it (completely undoing any nice folding I've administered to them first), and leap up to pull them back down. This is annoying and also dangerous, as it's led to episodes like this. But now we don't have to worry about it!


[I know none of my towels match - not each other, nor do they match the bathroom itself. I've lived in seven different dorms/apartments/houses in the past nine years. I can't keep replacing towels to match every time I move. Someday, though. Once we move to somewhere semi-permanent, I'd like to relegate the worn or ugly ones to the rag pile, and pick up a few pretty, matching replacements.]

Also, while I was removing towels from my closet, I discovered a couple long-lost hats, hidden behind them. Yay!

I still have a long way to go, but the little improvements have been encouraging.

Next up: maybe tackling those cd cases? *cringe*