Organizing. The never-ending chore.

I've been on a major organizational bender since losing the twins.  I'm so tired of our house looking like a war zone.  I'm okay with some chaos in the rooms that we are actively working on (currently kitchen and bathroom), but the rest of it is wearing on me.  Slowly, but surely, I'm making progress.

The first major thing has been purging what I no longer use.  I'm up to 886 (plus 150 from the "before Christmas" challenge) items tossed, donated, or otherwise rehomed.  I'm a little discouraged by my lack of progress... until I think that our house has 1036 fewer items in it than this time last year.  That's huge.  When I try to imagine our house and garage with 1000 more things in it than what it has now, it scares me.  I really should have taken "before" pictures of my cabinets.

After I've purged the items I don't want from an area, the next step is organizing it.  I've been buying baskets and other containers in order to better organize the tings we're keeping.  In the bathroom cabinet, all of the medicines are in divided baskets, organized by use.  On the back porch laundry room, the laundry supplies are all in a basket up in front of the cabinet, so that if I need to access something behind, I can just take out the basket.  Same with the pet medicines, treats, and toys.  It may sound painfully obvious to group often-used-together items in a basket, but for me it is a revelation.

The place where I'm getting hung up right now is clothes.  I'm two sizes bigger than "usual", since I haven't lost all of my baby weight.  And I'm honestly not trying all that hard, since we're also trying to have another baby.  Hard exercise can affect fertility, and I don't want to push my body too hard.  Plus, I'm still recovering from blood-loss anemia.  So there's my list of excuses.  Regardless, I had to buy some new clothes so that I could get out of my maternity stuff.  I went on a Goodwill shopping spree, and even though I spent less than $50, I now have 6 new shirts and 4 pairs of pants added to my closet.  I'm also storing both my class A and B uniforms, maternity clothes, some workout/backpacking clothes.  I have more clothes now than ever before.  I've gotten rid of some things I'm fairly certain I'd never wear again, even when it fits me, but some things need to stay.  I'm still looking for a good solution to this.  In the meantime, they've moved into the linen closet so that I don't have to stare at them every day.

Still.  Today I need to tackle the laundry situation.  It's getting scary.  Then if I have time, we need to go through the bathroom again before we take everything out in preparation for demolition.