Down Mulberry Lane

This week's progress...

Oh, it has been a week of progress.  I love it when that happens!  With decluttering, many of you know I moved everything to the basement.  Downstairs I have approximately 12-13 sized church tables full of items in my basement.  My job for this winter is to sort through it and disperse it to freecycle, sell on ebay or find a permanent home... if no permanent home can be found, it will be sold or given away. 

Well, this week, I went through 2 tables worth.  I was able to pack up the saw horse make-shift table and get it out of the basement.  I cleared that table and all the stuff below it.  Dh was real pleased to see something going.  I have two boxes of items for give-aways.  I found homes for some of my stamping items.  I have one box of stamping items/crafts to be ebayed. 

One thing I did was to condense my stamping items.  I had file boxes with colors of papers separated.  It was real nice, but not necessary.  I stacked all the paper inside my ironing cabinet and I found that I condensed 4 boxes worth into two boxes.  I did the same thing with the misc. items.  I have those three drawer boxes that can sit on a shelf.  Each drawer fits about a size of paper but two inches deep.  I had each drawer with one purpose... like embossing items in one drawer, flock in another, ribbons in one, chalks in another, etc.  Well, not all of these items fill up an entire drawer, so I put things in the drawer until it was full.  It is taking some rearranging as I don't want like items in two different drawers.  It is coming along.  I expect next week I will have the rest of the stamping stuff sorted through and that will be a blessing. 

My goal for the coming week is to have everything in the basement either on a table or under a table.  I currently have a 4-5 high and two box deep pile right in front of the furnace.  (That is one table worth of items).  I would like to either go through that or put that on the stamping table once I finish going through the stamping items.  It is likely if our application for refinancing our home loan that we will need another assessment done on the property and the house.  I would like the boxes to be at least "organized" while in the basement.  Some is rather here and there as I asked the kids to take a pile to the basement and it just landed willy nilly.  All is in boxes, it's just not very organized for looks. 

In addition to this, I got two parts of the storage area upstairs cleaned out and organized.  Woo Hoo!  Plus I moved my sewing area upstairs.  I am hoping after next week, I can finish my quilt blocks and then get going on my daughters transcript and THEN get going on the taxes... I'm sure Dh will not like that plan... perhaps it would be better to do the transcript and when I need a "break" work on the quilt squares.  That is likely a better plan. 

I am so happy to see this all coming together.  My ebay pile is growing.  I have about 6 boxes full of items to ebay.  That will take time as the craft stuff is little.  I have a bunch of books on half.com as well, and I think I might post the books in lots to just get them out of here.  But all that will take time.  That does not bother DH.  He can handle me putting items for ebay in one area of our upstairs.  It is not "used by anyone unless company is over (around the foosball table).  So that is the ebay plan, as I find things to put on ebay, it is put in that corner and that will be worked on once the basement is cleared out or when I have a few spare minutes to post an item or two. 

For those that think it is not worth trying to sell items on ebay and just throw out items instead.  I understand, sometimes I really want to throw it out, too.  BUT two weeks ago I had a spare moment and posted like 7 items and I ended up getting $65 for group of items.  It may seem trivial, but $65 will help pay off bills!  Around Christmas I sold around $100 worth of items.  It is amazing what people do buy on ebay.  It is nice to know the stuff isn't going to the dump as well. 

I plan to keep on with my declutter project.  It does get tiring at times, but I am beginning to see progress. 

Warmly, ~Melissa