tiffany's spot

There's no school today. So far, I've slept in, answered a few phone calls, watched a bunch of Ellen clips on YouTube and made a feeble attempt to clean up the kitchen. Then I tell the kids they need to clean their rooms. A little while later, Elliot comes through the kitchen pushing along a giant purple bucket full of toys. I tell her she can take that right back to her room. She says that she doesn't want all the stuff in her room and is going to put it all in the basement. I tell her that the basement is going to cease being a toy room shortly, and that if there's anything she doesn't want , she can put it in a bag and we will take it to MCC, but she is not just putting it all in the basement. She was surprisingly excited by this and took a garbage bag and ran off to her room. Then Tennyson comes up and wants to know what's going on. I tell him the same thing. He admits they play with next to nothing in the overflowing buckets downstairs and takes a g...

I wish I'd taken pictures of the other piles of things that have left this house in the last week or so. Today there were two mirrors, three boxes, a plastic bag, and a pair of boots that went to MCC, as well as two re-usable grocery bags full of kids' books that I gave to my sister-in-law. She'll keep a few at home and take the rest to her school. She teaches in a multi-grade early years classroom, so they'll definitely go to better use there than they were here! Also in this pile is a Tupperware cake taker that I've had for years and never used once, that I delivered and sold to a lady here in town, as well as a couple of other bags of things that I had borrowed from friends. Rest assured, if I owe you any stuff it'll be on its way!

I've been reading books on Minimalism. In the last few months, my home has been driving me NUTS. There is just stuff everywhere . I think it's the basement renovations that have kind of pushed me over the edge and found me kind of depressed about the mess and clutter. Then about a week ago I read a really interesting article on minimalism and women's clothing. Apparently, in the not-so-distant past, the average woman used to own a measly nine outfits. Today's average is 33 outfits. I wasn't surprised. People shop, I get it. But then I got thinking - I actually don't own much more than that really. I literally have one pair of jeans. I have a pair of yoga pants that I refuse to wear all over town because, come on, seriously. I have two pairs of dress pants. There might be a skirt in there somewhere that I never really wear. That's, like, 5 bottoms. When all my shirts are washed and hung up and all the hangers are slid together, they take up maybe 18...