Don't know why I didn't do this months ago......

On the weekend DH and I didn't have his kids and my kids were going to their Dad's for the weekend, so we decided it was high time to clean out the carport and our bedroom. With an autistic child in the house, our room gets used as a "keep safe" room when he is around and things don't always seem to leave it lol. DH's son is 8 and is autistic, he has the knack of destroying most things he gets his hands on and so our room becomes the dumping ground every Friday before we take charge of him for the weekend. On the following Monday things should get put back but unfortunately we try to think of somewhere safer to keep the said items but can't so we kind of just leave it sitting in our room, the result was a room bulging at the seams and very little walking space left.

We started in the carport and pulled everything moveable out and swept it thoroughly. We had 3 old kids bikes, some old weights, a trolley cart, plastic outdoor chairs, a trundle bed and a few other bits and pieces. I stuck a sign of $20 on the chairs and $20 on the bed and just put the rest out with a free sign.....well I have never seen things disappear so fast! I kid you not within ten minutes the 3 bikes were gone, as were the assorted toys we put out. We followed that up with the trolley and the weights and within 5 minutes they were gone alone with the chairs,,,,Sold for $20 and the bed which sold for $15,,,not bad for things I would have given away lol. I have no idea why I just didn't put these things out as we decided we didn't need them lol. Last year we got rid of another trundle bed and a cubbyhouse in the same way. It is amazing what the word FREE does isn't it? If I had put a dollar value on them they would have sat there for quite a while no doubt. But this was mainly about decluttering our house so that was achieved at least.

Then in the afternoon we made a start on our room, everything got pulled out and sooooo much stuff was tossed out, I mean it was just trash stuff, not even charitable. I ended up with 2 bags for charity but the rest was binned. I have no idea why it had been kept for so long. I am a very sentimental person but honestly as I was going through my stuff that I had saved since my childhood, I found christmas cards that were dated 1979,,,,,,who keeps christmas cards for 30 years?????? Lol the funniest thing was that I didn't even know the people the card was from!!! I even had 5 postcards that had been addressed to my sisterinlaw,...now she has never lived with me and I have absolutely no idea where on earth i would have got these from!!!!

Anyway because I like to digital scrapbook, I have put all of my photo albums (about 13 in total) on the floor in the loungeroom along with all the kids keepsake boxes. These used to be stored on top of our wardrobes. I decided that if they sit in the loungeroom they will annoy me to bits (which they are!!) and I will force myself to scan all the things I wanted to scan onto the computer and then I can store everything away properly and it will all be categorised etc etc etc. I think I will scan the kids artwork and throw away the originals, keeping only a couple of things and maybe just scan the school newsletters etc instead of keeping all the ones that have their names featured in them. At the end of the day are my boys really going to thank me for giving them a box full of paper which they then have to read through to find their names in it??? I think it will be much easier to just give them a disc that has it all on there and they can just keep it and go through it if and when they want to. At least they have the option then. Sometimes I hate the fact that I am so darn sentimental. I keep way too much stuff. I so badly want to get into my scrapbooking and get all the photos looking nice. To me the photos being nicely presented will probably be more important than an old school newsletter or a piece of artwork they did in Year 1.

So this is me this week, I now have a carport that looks presentable and clean, a bedroom I can actually move in and vacuum with ease and a loungeroom that now looks like a storage room lol....oh well you can't win them all. I just have to bite the bullet and start scanning and naming....wish me luck!