(Voiced by 14 month old Jack-Evan, Typed by Mommy)

Once upon a time my daddy built me a deck.
He said it was for my new pool.  I thought I already had a pool?

The next thing I knew, a strange man was playing in our tree, making a loud noise.

I’m glad he didn’t fall when the limb he was on came crashing down!!

And I’m glad my dog Gabby was inside when the limb fell!

Later, the strange man climbed in our other tree making more loud noises.

Watch out Daddy!  The tree might fall just like the……..

CRASH!!!

Daddy said it was ok that the tree fell. It was all part of the plan.

The next day, the big machine came in and made some dirt where daddy had drawn his circle.

I got very excited, thinking that I was finally going to be getting a new sandbox!!

But I was wrong.

This is what we got instead!

Now all I have to do is finish filling it up….

THE END.

In today’s go-green manic world, one begins to feel as if you can never get rid of anything.  Everything from milk jugs to egg cartons to junk mail must be put to another use.  But what’s the use of all that saving if your own house turns into a mini land fill?  Keeping clutter does nothing to save the earth - it just turns your own beautiful home into an unregulated trash dump.

For 2009, one of my new years resolutions was to clear out the major clutter in my life.  I’ve succeeded in doing that in a large way too over the past 7 months!  I’ve managed to rid my home of over 150 lbs of clothing (50lbs of which I tried to sell on ebay), talked myself into throwing away all of those old class notebooks from high school and college, donated 35+ large trashbags full of miscellaneous items to Goodwill, donated a huge amout of goods (including a black & white laswer printer and a home theater set) to our church yardsell, and kindly left 27 clothes baskets at the laundromat with a “Take me! I’m Free!” sign over them.  (My mom is a clothesbasket-holic…and I somehow inherited many of her basket’s children).

With all of this stuff gone, you would not believe how free I feel inwardly.  It’s akin to walking out of a 5×5 dark smoke filled room and into the fresh air of the wide open Appalacian mountains.  Seriously, getting rid of needless clutter definitely feels like a spiritual awakening.  I can finally breathe deeply.

To have come this far in getting rid of things is a major feat for me.  I’m a self-proclaimed packrat.  A junk keeping, non-trashing, hoarder of the 3rd kind.  When I was younger, I use to feel panic attacks approaching at just the thought of throwing away a paper plate!  For real.  I mean, that paper plate had memories attatched to it.  Plus, wouldn’t it be useful for something else one day?  Perhaps it could be painted on or rolled up and used as a vase.  Anything to keep it in my life!

Memory attachment & perceived usefulness.  And there in lies the trouble for the hoarding mentality.

Overcoming the attachments and ridding yourself of thoughts of “saving it for a rainy day” will take you a long way in your journey of clearing away the clutter.  It’s been a long internal process for me, and has brought me through a complete mental shift in how I think about objects around me.  Perhaps in the future I’ll do a post on some specific focus thoughts I used to rid myself of my hoarding tendencies.  But for now, I wanted to show a small look into one thing I got rid of last week.

You know how no one likes to gift wrap nowadays?  Every present you see now comes in a bag.  A big, charming, beautiful, cutesy, gotta-love-it, themed gift bag with nice rope handle.

Now how many of you, unable to throw those beauties in the trashbin, fold them up and stash them somewhere in your house instead with the thought that you will re-use it for someone else’s present in the future?

*RAISES HAND HIGH*

Yep.  That’s exactly what I did too.  And considering that I had 2 bridal showers and 3 baby showers in the past 3 years - on top of all the normal birthday / Christmas bags received - that makes for a LOT of bags.  In fact, more bags than I will ever use in my life.  I even had bags I’d been saving from as far back as 1997.  Nice bags!  I just never thought to use them, they were never accessible when I needed them, I forgot about them, or the theme wasn’t appropriate for the few times I give gifts in bags.

So, whilst going through my house a few weeks ago, scouring every corner for more stuff to get rid of (it’s quite addicting once you start!) it hit me - those gift bags were just clutter.  They were of no use to me and there was no good reason to maintain an emotional attachment to a bag.

CLUTTER:  Something in your home that is taking up space that you have no immediate or proven need for.

The day after I had that revelation, I hopped on over to my local Freecycle yahoo group and posted an add for “Various themed Gift Bags”.  At that time I hadn’t counted them, but estimated in my post that I had at least 30 of them.  I received 10 responses immediately!  Many of them were from homeschoolers stating they wanted them for crafts.  How good it felt to offer something to someone who actually needed it!  The bags ended up finding a great home with the first person who got an email through to me.  And with great relief I passed on those bags - 58 in all, of sizes ranging from small to medium to XXLarge! - along with some wrapping paper and other assorted gift wrapping accessories (bows, ribbons, tinsel, tissue paper, etc).  Even after all that, I was able to keep some of my absolute favorite bags - and once all the other unimportant ones were gone, I was able to find a proper home for those bags so that I can have easy access to them.  And lemme just say,  10 bags take up sooo much less space than 70 bags!

Gigantic bag full of the 58 giftbags I gave away.

The bags I gave away.  This photo doesn’t do the sheer size and bulk of these justice!
I had them folded tightly and stuffed in the outter bag, which was one of those XXlarge
bags about 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide.

My leftover bags in their new container.  Yay!

I’ve always loved aprons.

I suppose it’s because they remind me of my Grandmother, who passed away in 2000 at the age of 87.   She raised 9 children during the 1940s-1960s, and never wore pants in her life!  As with many women from that period, she also wore aprons quite frequently as well - even up through the end of her life.  There is just something so nostalgic and homey about aprons that give me a sense of peace.

I’m not really an apron-holic like some, but I do adore looking at them and have always longed to have a retro one (or 5) of my own!   I have 2 modern chef type aprons that were given to me over the past 5 years, but none that I had bought of my own liking.

So, after much debate, I decided to blow a small bit of spending money on 2 homemade aprons from Etsy that I had been drooling over.  And boy were they ever worth it!   The craftsmanship on both are wonderful - especially my full aprons.  Those ladies sure did take their time, and put a lot of love into crafting these garments.

The first one is a little half pink & brown ruffly apron, with cute cats and a small pocket on it.  I like to wear this one for cleaning as it doesn’t offer shirt protection when cooking.

And the second one is (in my retro opinion!), to die for!  It’s a blue full apron, with a slip over neck and thick tie.  It has a pale blue background with contrasting yellow flowers, yellow sash, and a yellow pocket.   Although “handmade”, it’s crafted by a sheer professional.  All of the seems are perfectly sewn and the edges are even beautifully serged for a nice finished look.

I wear this one for cooking and anything else that comes up.  My husband even loves it!  It’s just simply an all around fun apron to wear.

Sometimes I get lazy and go for a couple weeks without home cooking something, but I then get back into the swing of things and go on cooking binges - and for the past month, I’ve been in a cooking & cleaning mode and have been wearing this little apron to pieces.  It just takes much of the monotany out of housework!  It’s like a morning perk-me-up without the Starbucks label.

One thing I’ve noticed since I’ve started wearing these new aprons, Jack-Evan absolutely loves to look at them, marvel at the patterns, and hang on to them.  He follows me around sometimes and stands up, holding on to my knees, and hids under the hem of the apron and giggles his head off.  Sometimes I get so caught up in standing there playing peekaboo with him, I let the banana pancakes burn.  It’s the cutest thing eva, I tell you.  Just the experience of my little man enjoying the apron in such a way makes me glad to be wearing it.

Who knows, one day when he’s 80, he might find himself looking back in the far recessed corners of his memories, and begin to feel nostostalgic for a little old apron clad woman standing in the kitchen that he once called Mum Mum.