Well, it's done. Or mostly done. Kelly and I purged the living room (which I thought was fine) the dining room (which I thought was fine) and the girls room (which I had no illusions about). Many, many bags went to Goodwill and plenty to the garbage and recycling. (No yarn or patterns were harmed in the purging of this house.)
Elizabeth and Gina both blogged about this massive purging of stuff from the house. I'm telling you, I don't know how they did it without Kelly.
The woman is a machine. Things just fall into place when she does it. When I go through my stuff and toss useless things and organize the rest, somehow at the end you can't really tell. When Kelly does it, pounds and pounds of crap are gone...and she manages to be so charming about it that you don't really mind that she's throwing out all your stuff.
A few times I balked a little, and said "but Kelly, what if I need that, what will I do?" Kelly's reply?
"What would you do if you were a Rwandan refugee?"
Oh. Nevermind. I am so not worthy. That one statement made more of an impact on me than anything else. (More of an impact than discovering that I own five gravy boats. I'm a vegetarian for crying out loud. More impact than discovering that if I send three wagon loads of the kids toys and books to Goodwill, they will not be able to tell you what is missing..that's how much they have. ) I suddenly felt so excessive. I felt enormous guilt, here I was, trying to keep my stuff, and feeling so broke all the time, and I have way, way more than most people in the world. That Kelly, she knows how to motivate.
Even without the guilt, I highly recommend purging tons of crap out of your life. Trust me, it's holding you back. Kelly kept telling me how peaceful it is to have less, and now I see where she was going with that. It's very, very restful and clean. My life feels way more manageable.
The boring cardie proceeds apace, one sleeve done, the next started.
I'm knitting as fast as I can, to try and entertain everybody, but the big clean sweep mission took a lot of time yesterday, and when I was done I couldn't do much but collapse. Today should be better, assuming that I can ignore the fact that by comparison, the kitchen (which I swear I thought was my best room, very tidy and clean) is now a pit of filth and garbage.
I leave you now with this thought. Go sweep under your upstairs hall rug. Trust me, you want to get to it before Kelly does.