Yesterday, Matthew and a buddy of his started to bring the "outside" belongings to the farmhouse. The outside list would include anything in the detached garage, the 30'x40' shop, the pole barn, and other various areas "around the house". They started in the detached garage and brought a load that included lots of things Matthew and I had already gone through over the last month or so. Out-of-season clothes, tools, cleaning supplies, Christmas decorations, and more. We had already emptied one side of the garage so the buyers could store a few things there and we had organized the other side in preparation to move. When they went back for the second load, they decided to go ahead and empty the attic in the garage. Of course, here in Missouri this week, it's been like 900º Fahrenheit. So they climbed into the hottest part of the property and emptied everything we have been storing up there for the last eleven years. They brought the trailer over here to the farmhouse and had me go through the pile of attic treasures.
Ten years ago, in 2007, we had a tornado go through and pick up our pole barn, tear tin off of our shop, and throw Santa across the highway. Even though we haven't plugged Santa in for the last few years, I just cannot let him go. He still sparks joy for me. He reminds me of that time when God spared our home and kept us safe during that storm. He reminds me of my dear ol' dad "rescuing Santa" from his landing spot after the tornado. That old Santa is a joy-sparker for me.
And for Mattie. So Santa stays. And the other 95% of attic "treasures" go into the trash. Moving really makes you think about what you hold on to through the years.
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I've really tried to minimize belongings in our home over the last few years by using specific areas in the house for dual purposes. An example in the old house would have been our kitchen island. It had the dishwasher on one side and cabinets on two of the other sides. The top had a rustic-style organizer where bills, event invitations, and important papers landed. I had mason jars with pens and scissors in them. It was sort of the hub of the house. The problem is that it also became the "catch-all" a lot of the time. One of my goals for the farmhouse was to have locations in the house that would serve dual purposes, while making sure that these places didn't attract clutter. This is where I got the idea for a coffee bar charging station. As our girls have gotten older, they have started to spend more and more time engaged in electronics...mostly their iPads. We have rules for these and to be quite frank, they often end up on the refrigerator for a week at a time because the iPad is a privilege and when little girls make poor choices, privileges are revoked. I know that as they continue to grow, we will be dealing with other types of technology...cell phones, computers, and who knows what else. I knew I needed a central charging hub and I knew that this little space in the kitchen could be the perfect location if I would work it out right. I ended up finding a really well-made console table at a friend's garage sale in mid-June. I knew it would be perfect SOMEwhere in the farmhouse, so I bought it. We had several options for using the console table in this little nook by the basement stairs in the kitchen...a mail drop-off location, more counter-space for use in cooking, or just a decorative table. I knew that any of those three options could turn into clutter-central. That's when my sister-in-law mentioned putting our Keurig there. That really got the wheels-a-turning. I decided that having a coffee bar on top of the charging station would be perfect. And I decided to be very intentional about what I put there. In the old house, I always tried to hide the K-Cups.
Now, there is an outlet right behind where the wire basket sits.
Of course, there aren't enough plugs to service a charging station for the whole family...so I mounted a power strip on the wall behind the console table. Nothing fancy...I literally used thumbtacks to hang it (the farmhouse has plaster walls...have I mentioned that???). The girls picked out their own washi tape to identify their chargers and we fed them up through the drawer on the right. I plugged in my iPad and FitBit Blaze into the left drawer and we were done! A functional charging station inside and a beautiful coffee bar outside.
She has a specific order that you are to go in to make the system work and she promises that for those people who have gone through her entire program, she has seen no rebounds. Once I started this method, I was hooked. It became an obsession for me last summer and I flew through the decluttering and organizing tasks associated with several categories. Clothes. Papers. Books. Kitchen Items. Bathroom Items. Toys. I was really making good progress. Near the end of the summer, I was nearing the end of my KonMari journey. I still had a few categories left to go through. Holiday decor. Electronics. Teaching supplies. Sentimental items. And I stalled. Right there in the first week of August, with the items sorted and ready to be tackled, I stalled. I just left the sentimental items piled in a box, put the holiday decor back into the garage, put the tub of electronics into a cabinet in the laundry room, and took the teaching supplies back to my classroom storage closet. I had made amazing progress and when I started working at school again, I just lost the momentum to continue! The house stayed clean and organized for the first few months of school, but once we hit second and third quarter, I started losing control. Again. I rebounded. Sure, we didn't own as many items as we did prior to my first KonMari round, and we were more careful about our purchases now, but still...it was just a little unfinished. Fast-forward to this last spring. Our buyers contacted us and we began to make plans to move. I was still exhausted by the end of the school year and unfortunately didn't have it in me to start another KonMari round before school got out. In dealing with the house sale and purchase hiccups and trying to get the closing all worked out, I haven't even had a chance to start yet. But guess what? It's coming. I'll be starting my second round of KonMari this next week while we still have two weeks in the current house.
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