This stuff has already been accounted for, but it finally left our house today!! Three bags of clothes, a bag of shoes, and a bag of blankets donated to a thrift shop that supports a local battered women’s shelter. I know there will be more to come!
Category Archives: House & Home
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 15
We were STILL working on the storage closets/living room tonight…and ended up with another half bin for the garage sale (including a printer!), an entire bin of blankets, another shopping bag of recycling, and a HUGE garbage bag of clothes. Tom is REALLY getting into the spirit of this as most of the clothes have been his! (Or he’s just more of a clothes horse than I am!) 🙂
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 14
Tonight we worked on decluttering and organizing the stuff from the upstairs storage closets. Wow. It’s painful. The entire upstairs living room is FULL.
We got rid of at least a bag of garbage, a grocery sack of recycling, and half a bin for the garage sale.
Throwback Thursday—Tom’s Dinner
The first dinner Tom cooked for me—a week after we met in February 1997—at my mom’s house in Grayling. I drove over from Traverse and he drove up from MSU. Neither one of us can remember what he cooked (it looks like maybe chicken?) but I’m laughing at three types of alcohol on the table.
Katie loves chalk!
This is one area Katie definitely differs from her brother—she loves drawing at a much younger age! She saw the chalk sitting out and wanted to use it…so we went out to the driveway and she Had. A. Ball.
The tongue is out!
“Here, mama!”
She was scooting all over, legs and feet going a mile a minute…
And then she’d lay her face right down on the driveway…
She was covered.
Then she stuck her hand in the exhaust pipe and was covered in black. 🙂
She did this by herself! No prompting from me!
Oh, Siri. You know me better than I know myself.
I asked Siri to remind me to start the chicken. I like what she heard better.
And as it turned out, I should have listened…as that’s about the time my day started going to shit.
“Siri, I’m an hour late…please forgive me. I should have listened.” 🙂
You never know what you’ll find when you look up.
Look! A little lizard!
Katie almost stepped on him as she walked by. This is what happened when I pointed him out:
I was FLABBERGASTED that Owen attempted to touch it—he doesn’t like bugs or normal little boy things.
But Katie loves that stuff and she was ENTHRALLED…getting as close as she could!
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 12
I got rid of more clothes, tossed some shoes, and the glider rocker sold and left the house! Tom also got rid of more clothes.
We have to go fight tomorrow.
Well, we get to go fight with the furniture company tomorrow. Yippee.
When we bought the mattress we specifically said “So, with this guarantee, if we don’t like the bed for any reason, we can return it?”
Yes, of course, you have 120 days.
Great. Take our money.
Fast forward about 40 days and neither of us like it. We call to say we want to return it and we get a little grief but our sales guy says sure, he’ll start the paperwork. He asks if there’s another bed we want and we say yes, another Serta, but you don’t sell it—can you maybe order it? He says no. Not “Let me ask my manager and get back to you” but a direct no. Okay, so we order it online ASAP since it takes 4-6 weeks.
So our sales guy calls tonight to ask if he can’t get us the bed we wanted—he talked to his manager and he was pretty sure they could order it. I say it’s too late—we already ordered it and all sales are final. So then he was half arguing with me about trying to return it/cancel it and buy from them instead. Um, we tried and you said it wasn’t possible. So he says okay, he’ll call back with our return amount—reminding us that the two free pillows can’t be returned and we’ll be charged for them. Wait. What? Ugh…but I guess in the long run, not a life or death deal.
So two hours go by and he calls from his cell to say he just got done talking to his manager and we can’t return the bed for a refund—the return is with Serta because it’s their guarantee and the “comfort guarantee” is only for exchanges. I immediately say that isn’t going to work, we specifically asked about returning it—not exchanging it—and we were told we could…HE told us we could. He says “Oh no, I just read off the poster.” Yeah, right. You wanted the $$$ sale so you told us what we wanted to hear. Besides, I didn’t pay Serta, I paid your store. Your store can REFUND us.
Now, we’ve been doing business with this guy for TEN YEARS and I honestly just want to say “Really, John? You’re going to try and pull that? I’m pretty sure your manager saw the return claim for $2800 and freaked out so now you’re trying to claim ignorance.” But I didn’t.
I just reiterated that an exchange was NOT going to work and he said we could come in and sit down with his manager and we could see what we could work out. Lovely. He said we’re the first people that have wanted a return—everyone else just gets a firmer or softer mattress. Sorry, not my problem.
WE ARE LIVID. There is no $&@?#% way we would have bought the bed without that RETURN policy. That’s the ONLY reason we bought it. And the Serta website says the return and exchange policy is “up to the individual store”—so the store can do whatever they want…but I’m guessing they are blaming Serta because they don’t want to give us our money back.
Tomorrow is going to be fun. :/
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 11
And I thought yesterday was a banner day—HA! Today blew yesterday out of the water!
- A garbage bag of my clothes
- Two garbage bags of Tom’s documents shredded
- A stack of Tom’s magazines recycled
- Almost a full garbage bag of AV cables
- Two more bins of toys
- The decision to try and sell part of our entertainment center (the end towers)
- The decision to try and sell a storage cabinet
- A floor scrubber
- A set of bath towels
And I feel like I’m forgetting something…
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 10
Today was a banner day!
While the kids were downstairs, I was upstairs sorting toys. The keep pile was very small and the huge Rubbermaid garage sale/donate box was overflowing!
Then, as you can see from my earlier post, I cleaned out both Katie and Owen’s rooms…taking out at least one bag of clothes from each room, in addition to assorted toys and books…plus the glider rocker and ottoman!
Of course, all this stuff is still somewhere in/at our house…but it’s planned for eviction soon! 🙂
You’ll NEVER believe what I found in the driveway!
Owen barely took a cursory glance but Katie was ALL about it. We left it in the bug bin through dinner then Tom let it go.
My efforts since 9am.
I’m exhausted but still need to get at least one more room done. Granted it would be more awe-inspiring had I taken Before shots…but egads were they embarrassing!
We took the glider and ottoman out to sell since we never use it, cleaned out all the stuff that was tossed in before the flooring install (books and toys), took out all outgrown clothes, actually vacuumed, and wiped everything down!
We also took the screen door down so Charlie was very interested.
And Katie was as well—she kept creeping upstairs to see what I was doing…
She loves toys that she can reach now!
Owen’s room wasn’t quite as messy, but his room was full of construction dust. 🙁 I also sorted some clothes and toys for the garage sale and prettied up the books.
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 9
Today’s “bag” was a bunch of shredding and a bunch of scanning…so we lost about a ream of paper. Yeah, it doesn’t sound like much, but it was a lot of clutter in the office. YAY!
And all the scanned stuff went to Evernote (one of my favorite programs/apps ever) so I technically still have it!
🙂
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 8
Today was a technology day—I cleaned out my email Inbox! I’m pretty good about keeping it somewhat empty by Archiving and Deleting, but it was getting out of control. A few 15-minute sessions throughout the day and I went from 750ish to 299! No, it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things—and it doesn’t help with decluttering the house—but it’s something instead of nothing!
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 7
Baby steps today—I cleaned off the end counter that has been covered in crap for probably 30 of the 33 months we’ve lived here!
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 6
Another Lejeune Yard Sale item left my house today—yippee! It’s not quite as exciting as garbage bags of stuff, but I like the cash. And something is better than nothing! 🙂
And as a bonus…Tom sorted through a bunch of his clothes and tossed/sorted for donation the equivalent of a garbage bag. WOOHOO! 🙂
My three lasagna morning.
Dinner for the Mitchell’s since Ursula is really sick, dinner for us one day this week, and one for the freezer!
The bonus is that I used five [heavy glass] jars of spaghetti and Alfredo sauce that we don’t have to move!
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 5
Okay, I’m back in the saddle again after being on vacation and cleaning up from the flooring we had installed (yes, I’m still finding stuff that needs washing)…
Today was actually an easy day, as someone bought the office desk we’ve had listed on Lejeune Yard Sales [for months]. But, we also organized a horribly awful useless-because-it’s-overstuffed junk drawer…and threw out quite a bit (not a garbage bag, but I still feel accomplished).
What an unholy mess—I just want to cry.
At first we just noticed a little bit of dust here and there. No biggie—I expected some mess. But then as we looked further, EVERYTHING was covered in dust.
Floors, baseboards, molding, appliances, inside cupboards (dishes, silverware, cups), everything under the sink (towels, cleaning products, etc.)… It just keeps going and going and going. I think it’s mostly tile dust from having to jackhammer the tile in the kitchen, but it’s still SO VERY disheartening.
This is what the sink and dishwasher looked like for the first two days. I first thought we could just do Rinse loads, but that didn’t take all the dust off…so we had to do actual Wash loads. 🙁 And normally cleaning would be somewhat easy…except everything was tossed in the garage so nothing is where it should be or it’s buried under piles of stuff.
And just when you thought you were getting a handle on it all, you’d discover more. The entire pantry and every box and can in it was covered, too.
The kids’ cupboard:
The lid drawer:
We found shards of tile (and dust, of course!) on top of the refrigerator!
And Owen’s door wasn’t shut, so every surface in his room was covered. The bathroom. Some of Katie’s room. 🙁
I honestly didn’t anticipate this much cleaning post-flooring-install. At least Tom had taken the day off so he was able to help—but that meant BOTH of us spent A FULL DAY cleaning—and there’s still more to do.
Apparently assuming our contractor would try to lessen the resulting mess was stupid. Though of course we didn’t expect them to have to jackhammer the tile out…but had we had any idea, we would have emptied the cupboards, too. Oh, and they apparently cut flooring in the house at one time or another, as the return heat/AC vent was FULL of wood dust. (I know they cut outside, too, because we saw sawdust in the grass and on the porch.)
This was our first foray into hiring construction stuff, but we did have some thoughts on what might happen—and this wasn’t it. They did attempt to wipe up some of the mess (the appliances, windows, and sliding glass door) but really just made it worse since it was done half-heartedly.
I am trying to look on the bright side in that we knew we’d have to clean the house before we list it and/or move out…but that would have been on MY schedule and I would have hired someone to come in and do most of it.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry.
The After Pictures
Upon opening the front door after being gone for a week and seeing this…
I actually love my house…for a little while! The floors are absolutely gorgeous and all the newly-painted rooms look amazing! The minor downsides are that everything echoes terribly and everything needs wiping down (there’s a layer of dust on everything). And we still have to move furniture back in…but not all of it because it has to be staged.
But it feels good to have it finally done!
And we let the kids burn off some energy:
The long wet road home.
Unfortunately the day got started a little earlier than planned since Katie was a hot mess and woke us up screaming for no good reason. (She had actually done it quite consistently throughout the week, but it never lasted more than 20-30 seconds—even though it happened about 3-4 times a night. But today it never stopped.) So we were ALL up and moving by 4:30 and packed and leaving by 5:45. Katie didn’t stop crying for about 30 minutes, but then when she did…she napped for over three hours! YAY! And Owen finally dozed off about 10am so we had a good hour of pure silence. 🙂
And it was a dreary, rainy day…ALL the way home. And we hit a traffic jam right after lunch—a semi had gone off the road. So our already 13-hour road trip got another hour added to it. 🙁
But, amazingly, both kids were REALLY VERY good. Katie had a few minor tantrums but milk and snacks took care of them. And the iPad got brought out a bit earlier in the trip than on the way down. She’s so cute, too—she will watch the whole movie (including credits) quietly, but AS SOON AS the movie stops, you hear “Mama!” 🙂
Owen dozed for another little bit about 7:30 but Katie never napped again. We rolled in at 8:30 on the dot…
The Before pictures!
Proof it’s empty!
Sitting on the floor on my laptop in an almost empty first floor…I can’t believe I’m doing this and we’re not actually moving…and I have to do it again in a few months.
Surviving having no furniture just fine.
A full forty feet.
Well, not Tetris-full but full in the sense that we didn’t have to worry about filling it to the brim…but all floor space is gone. If we hadn’t put some stuff in the garage, we would have needed the 70′ pod.
After the floors are done, the pod will be used for storage to stage the house.
I don’t recommend having to empty your entire first floor.
This isn’t fun. It’s a lot of work (I had to take a back pain pill) and it takes a lot of totes. At least the pod is big enough to not worry about space…though the big stuff gets loaded tomorrow.
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 3
An overflowing garbage bag of shoes I haven’t worn in at least six years (my pre-SAHM working years). Lots of heels… It was hard…even though I really need orthopedic shoes now (for my back) and I couldn’t wear any of those shoes even if I wanted to.
40 Bags in 40 Days—Day 2
Toys, part 1
While one kid is at school and the other is napping…three bags to donate.
On a side note: please, no more stuffed animals!
40 Bags in 40 Days 2014 Decluttering Challenge
A friend posted a link to the 40 Bags in 40 Days 2014 Decluttering Challenge on Facebook…and considering we know we are moving soon, I figured it was perfect timing.
What is 40 Bags in 40 Days?
A forty day period in the spring (coinciding with the 40 days of Lent) where you focus on cleaning one area per day. In this one area you challenge yourself to declutter, simplify, decrapify, and get rid of things you don’t need. The goal is one bag a day but you can have more or less.
I want to be held accountable so I am going to be posting my daily results. The goal is one bag per day, but it’s not hard and fast (see site) as the main gist is to just get decluttered—one day might be a piece of furniture, one day might be three bags of clothes for donation, one day might be sorting through 10,000 emails, and one day might be skipped all together.
So without further ado, my day one:
Day 1—Pantry
One huge box of snacks to Tom’s office and one box of way outdated stuff tossed; the box to donate will come closer to moving day.