A contributing member of society (or at least of this family).

I might have, over the course of the last few months, watched about 2 seasons worth of HGTV's Clean House on Hulu (thank GOD for Hulu). It's like a much-scaled-back version of Hoarders, where a team of pretty obnoxious TV personalities go in and clean the overwhelming clutter out of people's houses and leave them totally organized. I've decided that I would love to do this for people. I love getting rid of JUNK. It's the organizing part that I sometimes skimp out on in our house.

Until now.

When we moved out of the old house we took probably 2 full carloads of stuff (well, friends Kristie and Larry ended up actually hauling most of it for us!) to Salvation Army to donate. And a great deal of that haul was clothes we no longer wore/needed. My task this past week has been to finally clean the master bedroom upstairs ("clean" meaning sit on the floor and go through a few boxes a day of clothes we deposited there when we moved and haven't touched since). And after emptying out all of the boxes and putting clothes in dressers and closets (finally!), we filled FOUR more boxes of clothes to donate over the past few days. Where is all this clothing coming from? Props to my husband for finally giving up probably 40 old race t-shirts that he never wore, and some out-of-style dress shirts and pants. But it doesn't explain the 2 boxes that I contributed after what I had already weeded out before the move. Or the fact that my closet and giant dresser and cedar chest are all still FULL of clothes. Yikes.

And while I am unable to lift boxes, paint, haul things up and down the stairs, etc. I am able to sit around and do this:

A big shout out to the Real Simple line of closet organizers at Bed Bath and Beyond. They hold a TON of stuff and appear to actually be durable and well-made. And yeah, the one hanging on the right is actually full top to bottom with scarves. I like scarves. A lot.

I mean. They're so PRETTY.

Uh, anyway. It is nice to feel like I accomplished something over the past week. Eric is cranking away on the baby's room (crib is put together! Chandelier and dimmer are installed! Antique dresser is in the garage with 2 coats of primer and awaiting a coat of paint!), and making the minor repairs to the walls upstairs so we can get started painting up there. I am hoping to recruit some parent/sibling assistance in painting up there this weekend while Eric is at Cross Country camp. He is in desperate need of a break from painting. Like. We might be bordering on painting-induced-nervous-breakdown. The up-side is that he's gotten REALLY good at patching and spackle-ing (how in the heck do you spell that?). The bad news is that he's probably never going to want to do it again. Ever. I hope he knows how grateful I am for all of his hard work on his "summer vacation" this year! xoxo.