Downsizing, organizing, and planning

I am getting ready to downsize in a huge way. I am just feeling more and more that we are to give away things, but not somethings.

The children have way to many clothes, like buckets and buckets and buckets. I am not kidding. How this happened I really don't know because honestly I haven't really bought anything for anyone in the last 3 years. Socks, underwear, a pair of jeans for my supper skinny guys and shoes.

But even knowing this does not explain why I have at least 20 totes and that many large garbage bags full of clothing. Richard is just as bad, he has so many things that he doesn't even know what he has.

Now my clothing is pretty simple, I have two skirts that I wear on a regular basis and about 6 tops. I have a new work skirt laying on the ironing board waiting for elastic and to be hemmed.

I want to get everything cleaned sorted and just give it away. There is a few boxes around here for Hannah House and Kings Ranch that I could put the stuff into, there is also a church over in my Mom's town that has a thrift store that is currently asking for donations. Then there is always the 25 cent yard sale. Just put up a huge sign that everything is a quater each, might make a fortune. LOL probably not.

But then there is the stuff that just gets in my way, all the kitchen gadgets, the movies, and the tv. As much as I would love to send the tv away, there are good things about it, like those Planet Earth DVD's, we don't have Directv any more and I will probably leave it that way. We just have a Netflix subscription and what I find a Walmart. I finally bought Wall-E the other day and it is really cute, I might get them Bolt in a month or so. We are also looking at getting some fun DVD's for school work. I have seen where you can get all of the Magic School Bus. But before I get these things I need to get rid of a ton of others that we no longer watch or just don't want. Perhaps I will make a DVD box of movies and send them to my sister in Germany.

I would rather spend my extra money each month on books, puzzles, games and other things that are going to have a purpose. I love the fact that the boys can be doing something and they are learning but don't realize it.

So my goal for the rest of the month is to go through all of those bags first since they are really a pain to store. We are going to pull out 7 outfits each, once they have their 7 they will be able to change with a new bag if they see something else that they would like to keep, but other wise it is all going away.

Oh and I didn't even mention all of the books that we have. I am wanting to sort our books by subject, so that we have science, history, math, and so on. A lot of the books that we have are things that I was able to pick up for our school board back in FL. So they are old library books, most already have the Dewey system stickers on them. I have thought about using that to organize our books which would be a great learning tool, however our little library here doesn't use it. You can't even look up a book yourself you have to ask the librarian to do it for you. And the picture books are just there. The other library they have their books color coded based on the authors last name, that way you atleast know which cubby the books belong into.

The bonus here is once I get all of this done I will have a lot more space in that new storage barn. The faster it gets cleaned out and organized the faster I can make it our school house. The hardest part will be figuring out how to put AC out there without making a whole in the side. See I just ordered a stock building, you can have windows and such put in, but I just wanted a building to get us started. Richard has already mentioned something about getting a second one later. So what I will do is get a larger building with windows and a normal door.

The best part will of course be all the extra room in the house. The boys have been double bunking with Thomas & Caleb sharing, and Matthew & Jadon too. We really need to get that third set of bunkbeds up. I am praying that we will be able to add on or something in the next year or so. That would be the biggest help, to make a large boys bedroom, a smaller girls room, a true school room, and a family room. I can see in my head what I want, I just don't know if it will work.

Oh well I am off to sort clothing.