TACKLING THE MESS

I am tearing my house apart.

This is no easy task as I live in the three-story townhouse that is packed with stuff I have been collecting off and on while raising three children.  Some of the stuff I've already attacked, for example a lot of the clothes went last summer, and the basement is well on its way from about eighteen months ago's purge.

I start with paperwork (which ends up taking days and still isn't quite done).  I finally have to stop after I have overfilled my recycle bins plus filled two trash bags with shredding.  After four days, the shredder craps out; it needs a rest, so I leave it be for about thirty-six hours then it miraculously returns to life.

Needing a break from shredding and tossing paper, I hit the closet again.  This time, I fill my car's trunk with bags of clothes to donate.  Where did I get all of these clothes?!  Funny for someone who keeps wearing the same stuff over and over again.  My loss will be some thinner person's gain.  Face it -- I'm NEVER losing that extra thirty pounds.  NEVER.

The worst part about this whole purging/reorganization project, other than the fact that it is taking weeks rather than days, is that it looks like freaking mayhem all around my house.  No, I cannot do one pile at a time because one pile leads to another and then another, so I start piling piles on top of other piles.  It ALL has to be done at the same time, so my townhouse now looks like a tornado hit a hoarder's house and made it even worse than it was.

Oh, and I simply must move around the furniture.  That's a given.  Adding to the piles on top of piles of stuff, I now have drawers of stuff everywhere so I can move the furniture by myself.  It's an absolute shit-show.

The best part about this whole purging/reorganizing project is that I am getting rid of so much crap that I almost cannot even believe I ever had this much stuff in here.  Oh, and it's also fabulous that I've turned the halfway point.  Yes, there is still mayhem, but I am starting to see progress in a big way.  I might be done by the end of summer, and I might not, but at least now this place is almost tolerable.

Almost.  I still have the games and sports equipment to tackle.