Decluttering

Major decluttering has begun. The numbers of tops and bottoms in my closet is now equal to my husband's. That's quite an accomplishment. I still have plenty of clothes to last 10 days. I also went through the upstairs toy bins and donated HALF of our toys and stuffed animals to Good Will. Anything that I thought just got dumped but never really played with went into a giant trash bag while they all watched a puppet show downstairs. I also - knowing some may think this sacrilegious - donated a LOT of our secular fiction books. We're only planning to keep really special books, reference books, hard-to-find books, and, of course, all of our Jewish books. Anything that can easily be requested from the library isn't staying here. I have yet to go through the games closet, but I'm sure there will be a few donations there too. We've definitely bought a few dud games over the years. It's been four days now, and none of the kids have said one word about any of the missing toys, books, or stuffed animals.

We are hoping to move in 2009, BE"H. Tonight we met with our realtor and found out what our house was probably worth, and I was surprised to find out it has dropped more drastically than I thought. A year ago, our house was worth about 60% more than when we bought it five years before that. Today we found out it's probably only worth about 24% more than when we bought it. Just slightly more than inflation. OY. Oh, well. So it goes. I'm just glad we bought when we did, and not later! B"H.

So, on to high-speed decluttering, extraneous object-selling, and repairing. 5769 (2008-2009) should prove to be an interesting year.