The Simplifying Project--Round 2 and 3

As last reported, I was in the middle of a huge mess with everything out of our storage room.  We are so lucky in Utah to have a basement with a very large storage room.  Unfortunately it also makes it easier to save stuff when really I should get rid of it.  I was determined to only keep what we would need (although need is a very hard term to define.  Gary pointed out that he doesn't "need" any of our holiday decorations.  I think he would miss them--well at least the Christmas tree and decorations.)

This is what things look like now.  (Normally people would do a before and after--but the before was such a mess that I would never take a picture of it like that.)

 I don't think that I have cleaned out the "long term storage" since we packed it with our long term storage of wheat, flour, etc.  However we had a mouse (or mice) so I took everything out to clean.

Here is my "holiday decorations".  One each for Valentine's Day, Easter, and the 4th of July, two each for Halloween and Thanksgiving with a couple of extra things (such as the smiling pumpkin) and a "whopping" 11 totes of different sizes for Christmas and 2 Christmas trees!  And that is after giving away and throwing away stuff.  New goal--no new decorations which don't fit in the existing toes and shelves for the holidays!

Everything has its place--so hopefully we can keep it that way.  Nice to have our food organized again.  Had to throw away some food which were way out of date, but not too much.

In the middle of working through this mess, our new bed arrived so I focused for a few days on the master bedroom.  For Christmas, we decided to give each other a Sleep number bed.  It arrived on Jan. 22.  We were expecting it to fit into our old bed frame which was suppose to be a California King.  However our new bed was about 6 inches longer so out to the DI went our bed after I had cleaned and re-polished the whole thing.  That was a bit of a shock, but already I am happy not to dust it.  Funny how I couldn't wait to have a actual bed set as we went years without one and now I am happy not to have one.

Our "bed frame-less" new bed

 I decided not to get another book shelf but instead I gathered some baskets and bins which I already had and bought a wire one plus new shelves and this is our new bedroom wall.

I got this for Gary for Valentine's Day but

once I got the wall put together I wanted to add it.

And for those of you who are wondering--after some adjustments we are liking our new bed although the jury is still out if we will love it so much to make it worth the money.  We do like the adjustable part--both the head and the foot move up and down.  We found that we both enjoy sleeping with our feet elevated just a bit.  I am sleeping with it much softer than I expected and my shoulders and hips are liking that a lot.

Another by-product of cleaning up the master bedroom was that I moved a smaller shelf into the bathroom to hold our towels and removed a bigger one (to the DI).  Again I am loving more space and less dusting.  (Although while in graduate school dusting has been pretty low on the "to do" list!  But we are talking about the principle of dusting less.)

Today (Jan. 30th), I continued to finish up the odds and ends in the game room downstairs and also did some reorganizing in the two basement bedrooms.  I think I will have to take a break from simplifying and started writing papers for school now.  I have to say that it has been a great experience so far.