The finale of our decrapify process.

Y'all-it is over.

We have decrapified.

All of the weight that held us down and made my heart ache and my mind become overwhelmed is gone. All of the stress of spending every waking minute in a house full of crap-is lifted.

10 weeks ago-I made the decision that I want to be able to spend quality face-to-face time with my kids. That I want to sit in my bible study and not think about the mounds of laundry I need to do. I wanted freedom to live-with less-and be content.

God orchestrates life so seemlessly that half the time we think we are fulfilling our plans-he is really prepping us for the bigger picture.

First-here is the garage sale-we set up Friday morning after the girls went to school-that way we avoided any early birds and our morning was pretty relaxed.

We sold til 6pm-pushed the leftovers in the garage and headed to Todd's dads for Todd's bday dinner :) 

Saturday morning we got up and pulled it all out again! 

We sold and sold and sold and sold til noon-then we scheduled a pick up by a local charity for the rest!

It was freeing, exhausting, and all around...worth it. We made around1,300$ during this sale-totally awesome. 

The bigger picture? About 2 weeks ago Todd started a new job...in a new state. Something that 10 weeks ago-wasn't even on our radar. So all this decrappifing  certainly helps since in a few weeks our house will be on the market to sale. Because we will be going to our new house in Georgia...in just a few weeks! OMG!!!

And it's a lot easier to sell a house when the lookers don't have to worry about things falling out if the closets and cabinets. 

So there ya go! Our decrapifing challenge full circle! If I seem distant over the next few days it is because I am busy trying to get our house ready to list. We still have a lot of projects that we were saving to do over the next 3 years-that we need to fit into the next 2 weeks!

 

The time is approaching-decrapify almost finale

We are almost at the end of my decrapify journey. This weekend is our yard sale-and we are busy going back through the house making sure that everything here has a purpose and it isn't here because of some shallow reason. 

This journey has been such a revelation for me. 1) we have a lot of crap.

2) it was weighing me down more than I knew.

3) God has been a huge part of this-preparing me for more than I realized when I started this almost 10 weeks ago.

To my friends and family-if you stop by our yard sale and see something you have me in the collection please don't take it as an insult. We have loved it-but now it is time to allow someone else to love it.your love and friendship fills our heart with enough joy that any trinket is just an extra sprinkle to our already yummy cupcake.

We have a lot of stuff in this sale-furniture, tons of baby items, household decor, kitchen thingamabobs, clothes, shoes, purses....a whole lot. 

I am a bit overwhelmed at the moment-not at the letting go part-but at the whole prep of the garage sale. Wowzers!

I won't be back here til Sunday-and then I will fill you in on the massive sale-how we went about it-and how much clutter we removed from our life.

Decrapification motivation

I received a Facebook message from a friend who has been following along and was bitten by the decrapifly (get it? Bugs bite...decrapifly/decrapify....Bueller?) 

Anyway-she took on her attic!! After it was all said and done she had 25ft of garbage on the side of her road!! 

Y'all-that's big!! 

What an awesome start to her simplifying (decrapifing) her life!! 

One of the biggest challenges we face in today's culture is the desire to have lots...lots of clothes..lots of home decor for each season...lots of shoes...make sure our kids have a multitude of toys that keep the entertained or help them gain knowledge...we make great excuses like "well the pink coat is her play coat and the fur is her dress coat and the north face is for cooler temps but not ice cold and the peacoat is for when the fur coat is dirty{{guilty}} y'all what if it was just 2 coats? A backup incase one got dirty??

Take a look at one space in your life...just one. Channel all your energy to one spot. Tackle it. Own it. Mine is my vanity. It's a wreck and it's the one space in the house that no one contributes to..it's all me. Ill be back tomorrow to show you how I tackled it and what the means to me,

Decrapification 1-2-3

I am so inspired by everyone that is taking on the crap and getting it out of your life.

Today I took a load of my expensive clothes and purses to a top consignment store in the area. Over 25 items-gone. I have also been selling some of the bigger items via Craigslist and Facebook yard sale ads. However, I think I am done for now-just going to endure the sale and then the charity pick up.

Tomorrow is my last day of cleaning out. I have 1 closet left to clean out and then the attic to unload. We sorted all the attic stuff during the spring-but left it up there until we were ready for the sale.

I have bounced back and forth on pricing for the sale-I hate to run a dollar tree-but I also don't want to have a lot of stuff left over....so I am thinking on day 1 we will have regular pricing-then day 2 maybe 1/2 priced? Or some kind of special. Not sure yet.

The girls are starting to get excited and nervous. It is so different having our house cleaned out but I know once everything is calm and we can reap the benefits of this process it will all be worth it. 

Plus-we have promised the girls a date night with the earnings. Dinner and a movie. That helps the anxiety! :)

Keep cleaning friends and don't forget to share with me your progress. 

The Process of Decrapification Dos.

I believe that means (part) 2

Yesterday, I shared with you my sin of crap and yes Crap is a sin. When I die (which I will) and I go to heaven (which I will) I will not be packing my suitcases and taking them with me. I will not be ordering my POD full of memories and loading them up and moving them through the big pearly gold gates of heaven. It is not happening.

All the "stuff" the CRAP as I am calling it (because stuff is so nice) will be left here. And so will my memories of it all.

Here is another secret-((sorry Mom...in advance))
Growing up we had a junk room in our house. Not a drawer (although we had those too) we had a junk room. A room of boxes and baskets full of stuff. Our garage was full of stuff. Our porch was unusable because it was full of stuff. Our closets, our cabinets...all were full of stuff. When we purchased the house from my parents 2 years ago-and we started moving out things. We found dishes wrapped in newspaper dated 1989. Meaning. Those dishes were packed up when I was 5. We have lived in 2 houses since then...Why did they still have those dishes??

My parents treasure their "Treasures". Now they are not hoarders with dead cats under piles of stuff-that's nasty. But if it is usable-my dad keeps it. If someone gives it to my mom...she feels the need to keep it. They attach to stuff. And as an adult-I found myself starting to drift that way.

It has been a prayer of mine over the last few months-that God teach me to not need so much. And boy-did He. He helped me see the crap-clearly.

This crap-it is keeping me from having free weekends to go and serve with our missions team. This crap-is keeping me from being able to open up my home to the youth of the church. This crap is binding me in so many ways. It. is. suffocating me.

In todays world we are being taught to value "things". Pinterest is a source of that. How many pins do you have that is material based? According to my profile...I have about 2,680. 2,680 pins that I see that make me want and desire things. Wow.

This whole decrapification process is not only a stress management tool-it is a way , that I pray,  brings me closer to God. I want to desire God more. I don't want "things" to fill my life. I want God to fill my life. And if I have "things" in there too--I want them to be things that I treasure. Not just things that I have because someone gave them to me, they were expensive/on sale, they hold memories, or 15 of my friends had pinned them.

I want less. Over the past year-and all our drama-I have learned I really can live without things. I do not need every clearance item at Target. I do not need a new coat every winter. I do not need to keep all the clothes people give me.

I talked about the plans Todd and I made a few days ago-One of those plans is downsizing. It is a huge desire of ours to live modestly. We currently have around 2600 square feet. With the porch and garage. We want to downsize to about 1800/1900-with some acres. We want to be down to the minimal and be thankful for the bounties God has given us.

Crazy right? I know. Trust me. It has taken a lot of preparation and prayer over the months for me to be content with that.

But now-it is a desire of my heart. We talk about this a lot with the girls. I tell them I am ready to be able to spend time with them-and not so much time cleaning and picking up stuff. They are excited. They even have purged a lot of the items they no longer use.

Continue with us friends-What are some of the things filling up your life??

The Process of Decrapification.

Yall. I need to confess a major sin. It's a sin that I have a feeling many of you commit daily-I have been speaking about this on facebook over the past week and I have discovered MANY women who suffer from this. So here it is-are you ready?

I have a lot of crap.

There-I said it. And yall-I am going to be real honest-I have so much crap-I can not enjoy my life.

Over the 15 months as my life has been spiraling out of control I began making list-because list are organized and well thought out. One of my  list is things that I need to make me feel better. The #1 thing-A clean house. And by clean I don't mean dusted daily-and spotless. That's weird to me-especially when you have 3 kids. I mean I want to get a phone call from a friend saying "I am in your driveway coming for a visit" And my first thought is "Come on in" not "OMG my house is a disaster!!" Why is my house a disaster? Because of all the crap.

So-Over the last 7 months I have been focusing on this. It started right before Mia came-then took a pause for a while-then I worked on it...but for the last 8 weeks-I really dug down deep. I set my plan-and I began.

I cleaned out one closet-one drawer-one cabinet. I took each item and said, "How do I use it?" "What purpose does it serve?" and "Does this bring joy or stress?" Some items...like the high heels that kill my feet were easy to get rid of. The others like baby clothes-not so easy. So then I had to ask myself the REALLY hard questions..."Why do I need this?" because of memories? No. If that was the case-I would have 2600 square feet of sweet memory crap. Because someone gave it to me? Well-it was used well and loved now its time to move on.

I put everything in garbage bags and started loading them into Todd's office (he never uses it) then I moved them to the garage and started sorting.

Each item is now being sorted. Pile 1) Donation. Pile 2) Consignment Pile 3) Garage Sale. Whatever is left after the garage sale will go straight to a charity-I have already scheduled the pick up.

Y'all, I want to enjoy my life. I want to spend Saturdays doing craft projects or snuggling with my girls-NOT CLEANING CRAP. I want manageable laundry NOT MOUNDS.

I want to walk into my bed room and it be filled with things that I love not decorations because Pinterest tells me it is the right way.

I want simplicity. I want my kids to value what they have-not be so overwhelmed with stuff that they are ungrateful. I want to need something-and know exactly where it is.

So-that's where I am. Decrapifiying my life.

So tell me friends---Do you have issues with this? Do you keep things because of memories? Do you desire to be free of clutter?