I have done the flylady thing too. I have taken bits and pieces of her system and made my own. I have spent the summer decluttering and painting each of the rooms in my house. We now have room for a school room/craft room. Now that my house is decluttered and I have daily routines my daily housework is so light. I just came to this realization. No more trying to clean around clutter. The only thing we step over his Kiddo's Legos or Duplo creations. I feel like we could have someone over and I wouldn't be totally embarrassed. Course as I type this my kitchen sink has dirty dishes in it... I will do those before I got to bed tonight. I have donated boxes and boxes to charity and thrown out tons of trash. If I haven't used something in 1 year, I get to say good-bye to it.
I go with the year thing. The only exeption is dress clothes we don't wear those very often and I need to keep them. I clutter problem is all the construction material laying around. We need it to finish the house but it drives me nuts somedays. Way to go Jo Anna, one step at a time and you will win the day.
Is there a church or hospital or something like that that could use some of your stuff? Also, I'm not that good at getting rid of stuff myself, but I find it's easier if it's going to a good home...we started visiting a nursing home/assisted living home when I just had my daughter and she was about 18 months old, after a while of visiting, we gave away some old stuffed animals (some of them mine, some of them hers!) to the ladies we visited, they really cherished those animals since they were a gift from us. Most of them had very little in their rooms. Also, having an old toy in the rooms to see again increased my daughters' desire to visit! There was one lady who had a collection of Elmo dolls, she almost cried when we gave her a talking Elmo. My husband almost cried, too, when he heard it was gone, that thing was loud and annoying!
