So last night Michelle’s mom and brothers helped us out immensely by coming to our condo and carrying away two carloads worth of stuff to take down to the yard sale in two weeks. And my mom has donated part of her spare bedroom to store a short ton of old art that Michelle and I have done. Michelle and I (though mostly Michelle) have spent the last 2 weeks going through our condo, ruthlessly setting things aside to either sell, give away, or carry down to the dumpster.
We watched a DVR’d episode of Oprah (we rarely get to watch live television anymore) that had the Aussie guy on there who helps people organize their stuff. It was a show on hoarding, and they were showing this house where they had been buying and storing stuff for over a decade, and they literally were able to clean out 75 TONS of unnecessary junk from this 3,000 square-foot house. Aussie McGee’s (until I find out his name, that’s his name) philosophy was to envision what you wanted that house to feel like when you first moved in, and use that vision to determine everything you bring into that house.
We want our condo to be a sanctuary, a place where we can come home and not feel overwhelmed. We want a home where we can have friends over, and parties, and not feel like we have to hide anything. We want to be able to have clients and patrons come over. We want a clean and safe environment for our baby, who we realize will accumulate more stuff over the years than we can imagine. And so we started going through our rooms judging everything by that criteria. It’s made it so much easier to see clearly and to just get rid of our stuff. We keep things because maybe they are still in great condition, or maybe we might need them some day. But will our house be better with or without it? That’s one principle of good graphic design/art … will the piece be better with or without this line? If it’s better without it, then get rid of it!
I admit, we have a pretty awesome condo. It’s pretty small, but it’s got character. And that’s hard to find in Bellevue. We had it looking pretty good for some Christmas parties we had last year. But then after the job thing, we decided to get our stuff out of the storage unit to save money, and we also decided to take everything out of our home office to try and make it more efficient, and then we got really swamped with cake tops and paintings and graphic design, that our condo has been in a state of transitional limbo, and quite honestly a mess. It’s still got a long way to go, but we made a HUGE dent in it over the past couple weeks. And we’re still pumped and motivated to do more, because we want our pad to be something that we DON’T have to worry about once Junior arrives.
Beautiful day today. I guess whoever that was doing all the rain dances finally pulled a hamstring or something.
That guy is just amazing – I saw him on some DIY show not too long ago. We’ve been ‘spring cleaning’ too, and with the loss of Molly it seems like a good time to regroup. At least there are almost 5 weeks in May, at least 5 Fridays….Good luck with the organizing!