Accomplishments (warning, boring post ahead)

(is it October or July??? It was nearly 90°F today! I had to turn the A/C on...)

By 3:30 pm, I had finished decluttering my entire kitchen. I went through my spice cabinet, and got rid of old spices, and seasoning mixes that I didn't like. I even got rid of the can of cocoa powder that I don't remember buying. I cleaned out the junk drawer, threw away the old oven mitts and potholder (the padding had separated, and I kept getting burned when I used them), and tossed the old cookie sheets that had discolored and warped and were no longer good. I also tossed the pizza pan, because the non-stick coating had started to flake off. Not good.

I boxed up the white dish set with the silver trim, the old corelle dishes, and the sage green plates that were all chipped up. I found the coffee cups to the white dishes, and four little cordial glasses, along with the ugly plastic dishes that we used when my son was little (oops! forgot one in the dishwasher!). I threw in a few other kitchen things, and some candles I never used and never will. Coupled with the box of books (Good-bye Tom Clancy Collection - can't read you anymore) and the box of toys I packed up a couple of months ago, I had five and a half boxes of donations for Goodwill. Everything was useable, it just needed to be out of my house.

I also cleaned out the refrigerator, and went through the food cupboards to toss out of date stuff. My thought is if it's open, and I can't remember when I opened it, it should be tossed.

Somehow, I ended up with a ton of empty popcorn tins, from Boy Scout Popcorn. I kept pulling them out when trying to clean out a really deep cupboard. I was going to donate them, but I put five of them to use. I put the brown sugar, the brown rice, and the hot chocolate and oatmeal packets into the tins, and put the tins in the cupboard. Nice and neat.

While I was working on the kitchen, my son was working on his room. He picked up any obvious trash, and put dirty clothes into the laundry. After I finished in the kitchen, I helped out. We threw away a ton of old notebooks, used up school supplies, and old magazines and other stuff he didn't need and couldn't be donated. We straighted up his closet, and argued about how he really needed to toss or donate more old toys. Specifically, the huge Hot Wheels playsets. I conceeded for now, in the interest of keeping things moving along. We are going to revist the room tomorrow, and further pare down possessions. He managed to gather a whole box of old books and movies that he didn't want anymore, but just one. I plan to up that by at least another box, if not a few playsets (he has FOUR that he hasn't used in at least two years. they can go!).

So, in the end, we didn't get as much done today as I wanted, but I did finish what I had started in the kitchen. All of the garbage bags went to the dumpster, all of the donation boxes went to Goodwill, and I went and got groceries. My son's room still needs work (more tossing! more donating!), but we were exhausted by dinner time, so we finished off the evening by finishing watching movies.

And tomorrow I get to go through and organize the DVDs and VHS tapes, declutter the bathroom, and hopefully get a start on my closet.

But, I am definitely going to try to work a nap in there somewhere... Too sleepy right now to even read.