Archive for November, 2010
100 Things.
Nothing lights a fire under your arse like making a public proclamation that you’re going to get rid of 100 things. So even though we’re not moving until mid December, we made our way from room to room paring down every single thing that we don’t love/need/use. The mantra as we went? No mercy. Because nothing is worse than packing, moving, and unpacking things that aren’t worth the time they took to transport or the space they’re eating up in the new place.
Here’s our getting-rid-of-it office pile:
Then we tackled the kitchen (Clara helped):
Here’s our outgoing kitchen pile (what you don’t see are a bunch of baskets and towels on the floor):
And here’s our den’s see-ya-later pile (cry not for the board games, they were doubles so we still have a copy of each one):
Our garage to-go pile:
Our basement done-zo pile:
And our big bedroom buh-bye pile (minus the baby and the dog of course- they stay):
And now for the full list of purged items:
- 11 pairs of shoes (10 of mine, one of John’s)
- 36 books (10 of which were cookbooks)
- 10 video tapes & DVDS
- 1 alarm clock
- 1 computer mouse
- countless padded envelopes & mailing tubes (from the days of our online print shop)
- 6 board games (some of which we had two identical versions, so we got rid of one)
- 2 yoga mats
- 1 radio
- 1 stocking
- 2 faux pumpkins
- 1 lamp
- 4 pillows
- 1 mirror
- 5 frames
- 54 items of clothing (including coats, hats, ties, tees, jeans, shirts, socks, etc)
- 4 plastic plates
- 6 ceramic plates
- 1 power screwdriver
- 4 outdoor chairs
- 2 welcome mats
- 1 rug
- 2 baskets of faux plants (they lived in the not-sunny-enough-for-real-plants basement)
- 1 floor lamp
- 4 plant pots
- 6 garden hooks
- 1 stencil
- 1 frisbee
- 4 old quarts of paint
- 2 buckets
- 2 metal tins (we came up with a new diaper & wipe disposal system- more details soon)
- 1 sprinkler
- 1 trash can
- 1 fabric basket
- 1 dark wicker basket
- 5 bath towels
- 1 nursing cover
- 8 baby toys & feeding supplies
- 4 glass cups
- 3 vases
- 4 pieces of faux fruit
- 8 wine glasses
- 8 mugs
- GRAND TOTAL: 222 items
Saweeeeeeeet. I mean on one hand it’s kind of embarrassing to admit that we were storing all that excess but boy does it feel good to get rid of it. Yup, that’s right. It’s all out of our house already – thanks to donating and selling every last item (we had an impromptu moving sale this weekend while we still had some steam and that no mercy attitude). We feared if things sat around for a while before we had a chance to donate or sell them we might have changed our minds and kept things that we didn’t need. And you know I have the patience of a 5 year old, right? More of those get-it-gone details coming soon.
What have you guys been purging? Have you identified any problem areas? We definitely held onto lots of books and clothes that we had no need for, but we were also surprised how many unnecessary kitchen items we were hoarding (many of which we had used exactly zero times).
Halfway
Clara is officially six months old today, which means we’ve reached the halfway point our weekly photo project (you know, the one with the fabric backdrops and photoshopped onesies).
At 12 weeks in, we broke down the “how to” behind the project right here, so this post is just more of an update – since we’ve now accumulated another three months worth of pics. Here’s a snapshot of the first 25. You can check them all out up close here on Flickr.
It’s hard to believe that we’ve taken 26 weekly portraits already. And thankfully we still look forward to our Friday afternoon appointment with the camera, some fabric, a white onesie, and our model. We worried that we’d regret the weekly decision and wish we opted just for monthly pics, but we actually look forward to Friday photo shoots and whatever facial expression adventure Clara will take us on each week. Whether it’s yawning…
…deviously twirling an invisible mustache…
…or even breaking out a ballerina costume to celebrate Halloween (pointed toe and all).
And in the affordable but meaningful holiday gift idea category, even though there are still 26 more photos to go before we hit our one year mark, we plan to package the collection-so-far in a little photo album Christmas present for the grandparents (I realize I sort of just gave away what they’ll find under their tree, but they’ve gotta know it’s already coming). And once we amass a full year’s worth of weekly pics, we’ll do a fancier hardbound book version for everyone (using Shutterfly or Kodak or something).
Oh, and lately we’ve been thinking that we may carry on the tradition past the one year mark because we’re enjoying it so much. But we’ll probably scale things back to just monthly photos at that point. We can only afford/use so much fabric after all. And speaking of all those swatches, from a DIY quilt to framed art or a fabric bunting, we’re so excited to repurpose all of the fun textiles we’ve been collecting thanks to this little daughter documenting project of ours. Can’t believe our baby girl is already half a year old. They grow up so fast.
Back To The Drawing Board
Here’s a little behind the scenes Friday bid-ness. Remember us saying how we recently debated how to best share our house hunting experience while still respecting the privacy of the sellers’ homes we were critiquing? And how we finally opted to share only a doctored image of the exterior, like this one below?
Well, we actually came to that solution only after this sad first attempt to disguise each home occurred:
I love my wife. And I think she’s very talented. Really. Especially with her cute drawings of our home’s floor plan and our lot (both of which came out really well). Which is why it wasn’t easy to look her in the eye and tell her that I didn’t think her crooked colored-pencil “interpretations” were, uh, the way to go.
Luckily for me, Sherry took one more look at them and cracked up. Then we turned to our trusty friend (you may know him as Photoshop) for the job. Oh and we used the Paint Daubs filter to work our blur magic. As for how it all went so terribly wrong, Sherry blames Danielle Staub (she was catching up on some Real Housewives reruns while getting her colored pencil on). That beeyotch ruins everything.
So that’s our little behind the scenes Friday outtake for you. Have any of you had to resort to Plan B after Plan A was an epic fail?
