Unloading The Clutter

     I was having troubles juggling school work and house work and a lot of the time I just wanted to sit and do nothing. Things had been absolutely crazy around home. This "down sizing" is work.  But every thing we get rid of makes one less thing to move.  It feels good to get rid of sooo much crap, and makes this place look bigger.  But, not only is it a lot of work, it is very time consuming. We had gotten new living room carpet before                                                                                           Christmas, and
liked the new look so much, we
decided to get carpet in the family room. 
     The picture here is of Abbey inspecting the new living room carpet. 
      To get the family room ready for Joe to rip up the old carpet, I had to set up a temporary 20 gal tank, which I did in the living room.  Then all of the family room furniture and 55 gal fish tank were moved in front of the fire place and in to the dinning room. Once the new carpet was installed, I decided to take the 55 gal tank to school, so it doesn’t have to be moved any more until we are ready to settle in to the “house of our dreams” or what ever farm house comes with the “land of our dreams”. 
     Here is a picture of the 55 gal tank set up...before draining it.  Mr. T is the painted turtle seen at the left.  Aquariums and terrariums are referred to as "living art" that constantly changes.  It is my favorite type of "art" because I love watching animals.  But this is high maintenance art.

     We sold my office desk, which was a huge old courthouse desk. So, most of my desk stuff (books, files, office supplies, arts and craft junk) were still in boxes, in my office and in Daniels room.  I had thrown away some stuff, but needed to sort through the rest of it.  I moved from an 8 drawer desk down to a 2 drawer desk.  The smaller desk really made the office look more spacious though.  The roll top desk in the living room has quite a bit of space in it for stuff.  So I am still organizing.
     We are getting ready to put some stuff (including furniture) in a storage unit to also eliminate clutter. There is a lot of Courtney’s stuff that she will want once she moves, but does not need right now.  We are going through the house room by room and getting rid of unwanted and unneeded stuff, including excess furniture.  This place will look much larger and nicer with out all the clutter.  Some of it is hard to part with, cause it brings back fond memories....but it is just stuff....things we'll never use.....and never miss.  It is stuff the kids do not want.....and why should we clutter their lives with it any way?  And some of it is no longer usable with new technology.... Encyclopedias, VCR tapes, Game discs for old computer systems, tape recorders and boom boxes, old TVs, old monitors, even some CD’s. We are removing kids toys, old board games, old nick-nacks, old trophies, etc.  I have gotten rid of most the animal cages and am also scaling down on plants.  I could go on and on.
     After a six                          Kaysha trying to stay out of the way.
day weekend, it seemed like a pretty long four day week at school.  It is hard to stay focused and get motivated to do school work when I am so pre-occupied with “cleaning house”, although it is nice to come in here and sit down to work.  Use my brain instead of my body.  There are times when I am sooo over whelmed with the task at hand (either school work or house work) that I just putter around, not knowing where to start and not really getting anything done.