Simple

I am trying to keep up the momentum on the house clean out. I haven't really done much more, but the wheels in my head are still turning and plans are being made.  My goal is to try to donate as much as I can and preferably do it to places other than Goodwill.  I do think Goodwill is a good organization and it is very easy to make donations there, but I kind of want to do something more - I want some of there things to go directly to people in need, rather than into a store where anyone can walk in and buy it.

For example, one of the local dry cleaning companies is collecting coats for kids, so I am planning on cleaning out our coat closet and donating our old coats there. I want our unnused clothes and baby items to go to a shelter or a children's home.  Of course, I will try to sell a few things too if I can, because in this process of purging one of my goals is to turn our spare room back into an office for Hubby. Part of our office clutter problem is that we don't really have any shelving or storage solutions for all our office supplies and equipment. If I can make a few bucks selling some of our stuff, that money will go toward a few shelving units and some boxes and organizational items.

Another area that needs a good purging is the boys room. I really need to get in there and clean out all the outgrown clothes and toys. There is so much stuff just piling up because there is no where to put it out of the way.

Of course I could say that about all the rooms.

I am trying to keep my eyes open for a place to recycle magazines and phone books. I will try to sell some of the trade magazines we have to Half Price Books, but I am pretty sure they won't want back copies of Rachel Ray and Real Simple. ;-) So those will have to go to recycling.  I read online that you can actually compost old phone books as long as you remove the pages with colored ink and plastic covers.  I am not sure how I feel about the yellow paper though - surely there is some sort of dye in that, right? I really don't want all that being infused into my vegetable garden. I am sure that the ink isn't much better either.

There really just isn't any way to get away from all the chemicals in everything. But that is a discussion for another time.

Until,
D :)