One HUGE task-Phase One

On Tuesday, I had a little "I've had it!" discussion with the "Boys" (my hubby and his son). After our Family worship so that we were all in a "spiritual" frame of mind.



I know I'm fussy about things, but after all, I do live here! And, I want my house clean! We have SO much junk and some days I feel like the walls are moving in on me. Anyway, they are always so agreeable. Jim is not a complainer and Spence is just a Jim clone (Problem is getting them to follow through). Jim is great about helping, I just have to ask. And, remember this picture? I know Spence has it in him, too.

So, after our "little discussion" with printout detail, Jim took Friday off work and I posted this message on the refrigerator:

I was up early-I usually go to the gym, but I figured this would be one day I could bail and I was fairly sure I would get a workout. We have shelves in the basement office. Jim and I are both book people. We could just sit in a library or a book store all day and never get bored. Problem is, we bring them home and they accumulate. So, we build more "Storehouses" for our books. Thus the problem. All of these shelves were LOADED UP with books / VCR tapes / DVD's /Bound volumes/ Photo albums and our model car collection!


So, phase one was to go through each book and ask ourselves these questions:



1. Do I use it NOW or have I in the last year-two years-10 years?
2. Can I get the information off the Internet or at the Library?
3. Is it in the WT Library?
4. Is it a keepsake?
5. We don't even have a cassette player anymore!

I should have take a before picture. You might think this IS the before picture. Actually, its an "In progress" picture. But see the empty shelves?

The next step was up --out of the basement--out of the house! This is the "don't go to the gym reasoning I used. I was determined it would not just sit downstairs waiting to be removed. I didn't have boxes, so my "Sacks" came in handy! I bagged up the books in sacks!

After Many Many loads up and down the steps-don't make a trip without something in your hands rule, we had these piles upstairs:

We actually filled up my car two times-one all for charity. We went to the side door, they saw what we had and sent us to the Large ramp in the back because it was a Large Load! YIKES. I often take things-2 or 3 bags to drop off and get out of the house. I wanted to tell them, "we are cleaning out my parents home for them.-they are such pack rats, we thought we'd help them". But they looked at us and probably just knew that we are the parents that need the help.



Can't wait to finish it all. That was just Phase 1 in the basement!



Had LOTS of help from the "Boys"! I was SO excited to have them chipping in, really doing an AWESOME job!


As for Spence, one discussion and he not only did the dishes Wednesday-ALL of them, he emptied the dishwasher AND made us dinner on Thursday. Then did a MAJOR part in the clean-up Friday!

WOW!

As for Jim and I? We are well pleased at our efforts.

Our bodies, however, are NOT!

Looking forward to Phase 2! The upstairs office-and other book shelf.