mini purging

An old purge picture

I was reading a post over at frugalwoods this morning and I realized that about this time during the year, we are completing "our annual purge." The purge typically begins when we pull out the Christmas decorations and as we start putting them away, we go from one area of the house to another in an epic sometimes 4-week adventure to do an entire house wide inventory of all of our belongings. The end result is a clean and de-cluttered home where we are only surrounded with the items that are useful and that bring us joy and happiness...

And we manage to eliminate the junk that has managed to creep into our home over the course of a year.

Every drawer, every closet, every nook and cranny gets emptied, wiped down and cleaned. We open every box, sort through items, shred paperwork and decide if something is worth keeping and storing in our limited space (we don't have a garage).

In past years we have had a bag or two of items we weren't sure about, so we have boxed them up and kept them until the next purge, where 9 times out of 10 they leave our home for the donation pile. What's really nice about living in a condo is that if we place items out by the dumpster, they are almost always claimed by someone else and avoid a landfill.

We ourselves have been the benefactors of dumpster drop-offs too. Toys for little man, fans that still work... even computer chairs if memory serves me correctly.

But the annual purge is here, and this year we AREN'T PURGING.

YUP, we won't be purging this year because we STILL aren't unpacked from the move completely and we don't have all of our storage built to open boxes and go through them (no built in entertainment center for the living room, or the final piece of our closet up and running...) and without these elements in place, purging isn't worth it this year.

Sure we will clean and re-arrange furniture as I paint our living room and kitchen, but just 6 months ago, we purged our belonging when we boxed everything up for the move...  and then what we did unpack, went through a second purge right there from the get-go. Having had most of our stuff in boxes for staging and then the move, really had us evaluating what we NEEDED on a day to day basis and a lot of stuff just didn't make the cut.

Since we aren't doing a BIG purge this year, I thought I'd highlight some of our other purging efforts in-case you all need some motivation to stay the course and do some of your own purging and deep cleaning: 

2013: January Purge Fest
2014: The Great Purge
2015: Annual Purge
(2016 we didn't blog the purge, but did it!)
2017: I thought we already purged...

We did recently purge our computer desk drawers of junk and unpacked 3 boxes! I tossed out some old foam squares I used for a workout mat that just weren't what I wanted (or long enough)... I found some 1.5 and 2.5 lb ankle weights, right as I was considering buying some light walking weights to hold on my treadmill (so I actually saved some cash by not buy something I already owned cause I can just hold these).

Hubs also has been copying all of our DVD's onto our plex server, so we can eliminate the cases and the physical copies... I finally tossed my entire CD collection, as these have been copied onto our computer and I-tunes for some time and to be honest, the only CD player in the entire house is in my car. (We also don't own a DVD player, so we'd have to copy movies to our PC or play them in our gaming consoles --which aren't unpacked yet... so the plex server is our best option).

I also found a few things to donate to a work event i'm doing... some old picture frames and some scrap booking materials I wasn't going to use.... I attempted scrapbooking last year and did a few pages, but I really like the photo books from shutterfly more, so I hope to scan in my movie tickets and just create a book instead to have in our home that documents the memories... plus I hate that my scrap book never lies flat because of all the stuff that's put in there... so I think i'm flying my white flag where scrap-booking is concerned.

SO a bit of a January Mini Purge... and hopefully by June well get caught up on all the house projects!

Happy Purging!

I thought we already purged...

Yup... Were only 4 months into the new year and are currently under going a second huge full house purge...

Only this time, were boxing up what were keeping... because we are seriously considering moving.

Our open house hunting has been pretty eye opening and we are considering listing our condo in the next few weeks to see what kind of offer we can get. The few two bedrooms we really like are either just units in the wrong location but we like the floor plans, or just out of reach financially ... and until we get an idea of what we can get our home sold for, we won't really know if we can get a 2 bedroom place this year or not.

We found a great realtor after i fired one (thankfully pre-contract), and now we are doing our three phase plan.

Step 1 - Look at places we might want to buy so we know whats out there and what we can afford.

Step 2 - Purge and pack to prepare for a storage unit. This includes my in-laws coming to visit to pack up all our baby belongings.

Step 3 - Improve the condo by removing our personal belongings, hiring painters to re touch and give it a polished look... then bring in the cleaning company.

Annual Purge

Since we spent most of the year purging the house in preparation for our "mini me" ... the annual purge was REALLY easy to do this year.

I didn't have to purge my clothes wardrobe because that's not a smart thing to do until our little replica is at least one years old... 

We didn't have a walk in closet to go through... now that our goober has a "room"...

We purged our Christmas decorations in November when I decorated... so my santas village and our inflatables went to go live with my sister at her house...

and nothing lives under our bed now that it folds up since we installed the murphy...

So what did we decided to toss out?

Earlier in the year we bagged up some extra bathroom towels we weren't using... and we haven't touched them in about 4 months so I think its safe to donate those to a dog rescue.

We are getting rid of one of a large suitcase roller bags because we got 2 new ones last year and held on to the third one just in case but we really don't need it...

An old sweatshirt...

and I was going to get rid of our coleman stove because our BBQ is so portable, but I decided against it today and put it back in the closet.

I also got rid of all of the birthday and Christmas packaging bags we had "saved" from old gifts. I never end up using them and wrap everything anyways so we decided against storing them because they always fall out of the closet when we open it anyway...

and some blue tooth capable speakers that I'm going to attempt to sell on facebook.

We still have the outside patio closet to go through and a few drawers in the kitchen but it is what it is and i'm calling the project done for the year :)

Something looks different....

Back when I first got my condo, my bedroom looked like the photo on the left.

I was rocking this nice solid wood oak bed with matching dresser, chest, and night stand...

My bedding matched and my adorable panda collection had prominence...

Fast-forward 4 years and were married, still in the same condo, but the look is drastically changing...

How drastic?

Well, the chest of drawers is gone... and was replaced with a more save friendly unit from IKEA...  But now the bed is gone... its sitting in my mom's garage.

We were able to find a metal bed frame for $61.56 so the other day South County Boy took a work truck home and we moved it over to my mom's house... and now my bedroom looks like this:

Gone are the decorative bedding materials my husband refused to sleep on... and the 4 poster wood bed frame that takes up too much space in our room.... and we have said hello to bed risers (which yes, makes it more difficult for me to get into bed)...

I kind of miss it when I look back on my old remodel photos to see what my place used to look like, but I love our extra room so much more...

I know it will be better once the whole room is complete, but for now, this is what we got and its a little sad... But were slowly making the place "ours" in every since of the word.

Oh, growing pains...

The great purge

Every year we go through our condo and take inventory on what we own and clean everything... and by everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Every drawer, under the bed... behind the furniture.

We generally start in November when we haul out the Christmas decorations and we generally finish up in January by the end of the holidays.

We had finished most of the place in January, but we were having a hard time getting rid of the bags and some furniture pieces we had managed to pair down, so I held off posting about it because I felt like the job wasn't done until the items were gone.

Particularly the wooden hutch that we have had in our living room since January 11th. We had it shoved in front of our bookshelf near the kitchen so everything I wanted to watch a movie or a TV show on the computer and attempt to cook, I couldn't... because I couldn't see over the hutch in the kitchen... so it drove me CRAZY... but  NOW EVERYTHING IS GONE so I can FINALLY blog about it.

We took our old bar stools over to my mom's house to store for later... (along with the chest of drawers, pictured above).

We cleared out at least 5 garbage bags full of clothes, books, my old bedding set that SCB refuses to sleep on (too soft for him), our old bathroom hanging shelves and storage items from when we put the new cabinets in... SCB even parted with all his Yugo cards, dragons, and his play station (the video games, console, dragons, etc were sent to his brother in Oregon-- everything else we donated to our annual Relay For Life Garage Sale... which brought in over $1,000!!!)

We ended up emptying our wooden hutch at the foot of our bed and getting rid of it a few months ago. It didn't make it to the garage sale because we had no "corner" we could keep it in when we re-arranged the bedroom furniture... so it ended up getting pitched because it wouldn't fit in our cars to go down to Goodwill... (It's moments like this where we miss Wanda the hatchback and her amazing storage shoving capabilities.)

So how did we manage to get the wooden hutch out of our house 2 months later?

Hubs was driving the work truck back to the shop and hit a pile of traffic. The monster truck was empty and his boss had joked in the past about SCB just driving it home and then coming to the shop the next day in the truck to save gas and hourly pay for the company...

Knowing I had the drawers in the house... he called his boss and asked him if his boss just wanted to take SCB's car home that night. His boss lives 5 miles away from their work and normally drives the company truck home. SCB makes a point of keeping is car keys in his desk in case they ever need to move his car while he's gone.

Hubs pointed out that if he took the work truck home, they didn't have to pay him OT to sit in traffic just to  bring it back to the shop...  especially since we live on the way back to the shop and he could pick up a delivery on the way there the next day to save some time (and gas) since the warehouse was getting behind with deliveries and pick-ups. He may have also mentioned how we would love to be able to remove the furniture from the living room and take it the 5 miles to my mom's garage to store...

He agreed and I finally got the sucker gone. We took it to my mom's house because we want to get rid of the entire set together instead of piece by piece, especially because the rest of the set is immaculate and only the chest is kind of junky. So it might be a future craigslist item... or something we donate to next years charity garage sale.

Now that the chest is gone, my urge to purge has returned... which is good timing since this month we are working on getting new bedroom furniture, which naturally mean's i'll end up tossing out a whole lot more as we continue to re-organize our place.

Getting Organized

So back in December we bought a new fire-proof safe because the little one I bought many eons ago was now full and South County Boy REALLY wanted to get one that we could put hanging holders in. So I surprised him with one from Walmart one day.

Now these "fireproof safes" aren't really for "safety" from your average thief... Partially because you can just pick it up and carry it away... and also because you can just pick the lock with a nail file that comes on a pair of nail clippers. Yup, that's right... Just shove it in and jingle it around and the latch will move (True story).

Actually the safe was so cheap that SCB bent BOTH keys trying to open it up the other day. (He didn't fully insert the key before trying to turn it). That meant I had to take a hammer to it this morning and smack one around a bit to bend it enough so it fit into the lock because I couldn't find the small set of nail clippers to use. (yup, I went looking for the nail clippers BEFORE trying to fix the key it came with)

So we mainly got it because it was cheaper then a small file cabinet and it claims to have some fireproofing to it.... Either way, we haven't done anything with it. It's been just living in our living room on the floor... hanging out empty like a piece of random furniture.

So I finally got around to going through the pile of stuff that was in it, purging some and saving others... in ... get this:

FOLDERS... with LABELS... and TABS. It was an office geeks kind of party my friends.

And I learned that I apparently save all kinds of stuff... including my first apartment lease papers from 2007?... (ya, that got shredded... well its in a pile of other random crap that still needs to be shredded)....

Eventually we will go through the desk drawers and random kitchen cabinets and move all that stuff into the safe and hopefully in the process purge the stuff we don't need and add it to the shred pile too. (Considering I have a kitchen drawer dedicated to manuals for random appliances... it may take a while.)

So where was SCB while all this was going down? He was working... But don't you both work Monday - Friday?

Nope. Not anymore.

As apart of my promotion back in July, I was supposed to start working Tuesday - Saturday... with a split shift schedule.... meaning Tues, Wed, Thursday, I open at the crack of dawn and work 5:15am -1:15pm... and  Fridays I work 1-9pm... and Saturdays 11-7pm. (instead of M-F 5:15am - 1:15 pm... with hubs getting home around 3:30 - 4 pm)...

So a little change. The only reason I didn't start my new hours till now was one of my co-workers was expecting and planning a 3 month maternity leave to bond with her little bundle of joy, so they didn't want to make any changes until she was back... and she's back. It will take some time to get used to, but i'm looking at the silver lining despite not having Saturdays with my hubby anymore.

I'm actually going to get a bit more "me" time in the deal then before...

Like Friday mornings I now get to sleep in, make time to work out, blog, clean the house... and then do house projects (like the above)... WITHOUT SCB to distract me. Its kind of nifty for the moment. I love them man, don't get me wrong, but sometimes when I want to clean or do a project its like pulling teeth to get him on board... and in a small space, you really have to have all parties on board or someone will be complaining bloody murder by being bothered.

I'm also looking forward to getting in a fitness class or two or an opportunity to pound the pavement solo... and if you saw my last post about exercising with SCB, I'm kind of loving it (sorry hunny... kisses?).