The Great Cleanout 2011

I wrote about the Great Cleanout on Friday, and I am happy to report we were very successful this weekend.  Rob was so proud of the pictures of my office, so he knew I had it in me to undo some of my hoarding habits.

Saturday morning started at 8:30 for us.  We started in the bedroom, and were imprisoned in there for 4 hours.  I do not have any pictures of the bedroom because my boss said I was way too easily distracted.  However, we hauled 10 (TEN) garbage bags of stuff out of my bedroom.  One of those bags included at least 75 pair of underwear.  Who has that many pairs of underwear?  Obviously you can’t wear that many, because if you’re like me, you wear the same 10 pair over and over again. 

(***A side story- as I was throwing out the underwear, I came across a pair that was 13 years old.  Rob and I were laughing about it, but then my little-hoarder-in-training piped in.  Cade got all upset about us throwing out our “family memories.”  We had to laugh that our underwear could mean family memories, especially a pair that existed long before our family.)

Once the bedroom was completed, we moved to the hall closet.  This closet contained the multitude of  scrap material I have held onto forever.  Here is a before…

Poor SaraGrace couldn’t get back down the hallway.  This was a fun cleanout.  We found all sorts of treasures.  My favorite was this…

This was my pound puppy, Pumpkin, from 1986.  I forgot I had saved this hound.  SaraGrace was so excited to have a new friend to play with.  He was a little stiff from old age, so I think he may need a “Downy with Febreze” bath.  We sifted through pictures and had tons of good laughs.  When I can get my hands on a scanner, I have some good material for some funny posts.

Here is the after of the closet…

Then we moved to our laundry room.  Let me just say that this room has always been a disaster!  It just overwhelms me, so I have no motivation to clean it out.  But, thankfully Rob helped keep me motivated and here is the before/after…

 

It looks so much better.  You would be so proud that my 10 bottles of detergent have withered away to 3, plus one bottle of stain remover.  However, I am certain that the one box of Dreft I kept is from when SaraGrace was born.  That would be 4 years ago!

My favorite feature of the new and improved laundry room are the hooks.  Because there was never anywhere to put anything, all of our purses, bags, etc. ended up in the floor in the kitchen, creating more clutter.  We also had a hard time keeping up with our keys (don’t be so surprised!).  So here is our solution…

Never mind the huge shadow.  Just look at how nice the getup looks.  The key holder is just adorable.  Cade made it for Rob for Father’s Day.  Here is a close up.

The last project of the weekend was the junk drawer.  Y’all they call it a junk drawer for a reason…it always looks like junk!  Ours looked like a bomb had gone off in there. 

Let’s just say that all evidence of my hoarding tendencies were found right here in this drawer. 

If you look closely, you will see 5 (FIVE) pairs of nail clippers.  Then, I found one more after I took the picture.  I threw away 3 of them.  That’s got to be at least step 3 in the recovery process, right?

Then I found 8 (EIGHT) pairs of scissors.  I only threw away 3 pairs (they were the little plastic ones) and kept the other 5.  You can never have too many pairs of scissors!

But once I got through with the drawer, it was so nice and neat.

Rob kept getting on to me for keeping all of these baskets and containers, but see, you really might find a use for them someday.

The kids found ways to entertain themselves while the house was torn apart.

SG rode her bike around the garage with her helmet on backwards, and a wardrobe that would make any princess jealous.  Cade entertained himself by following us around to make sure we weren’t throwing out all of our “family memories”.

This picture cracks me up.  Cade held onto that football to ensure it would not find it’s way into one of the black bags taking a ride in Daddy’s truck.

Along the way, we found many little treasures as incentive to keep on cleaning.  I found $85 in spa gift certificates, a $100 savings bond that has matured, a $50 savings bond that will mature next year, a collection of coins we forgot we had, and a handful of change. 

We were able to find a home for all of the clothes, as well as pots and pans and lots of other things.  Rob only had to make 3 trips to the dump.

I would say that the Great Cleanout 2011 proved to be extremely successful, and has inspired us to start a few new projects.  I can’t wait to see what else we come up with.