A few projects

I have been on a mission to declutter/organize/clean my house. Once school begins we are gone at a lot of activities throughout the week. When I am home I want the house to be organized and clean so we can relax here. I am trying to gather items to give away for our church bazaar in November. I would have liked to have done this during the summer while we were on homeschool break. That did not happen while we were gone for a month to my parents. Here is what we have done in the last couple of weeks:

*Made it through one file cabinet drawer of old papers and receipts for taxes. Our shredder got a very good workout. This took several days because the shredder overheated and I would have to wait to shred more.

*The boys are currently in the middle of organizing their Legos by color. We got it to the point that we can clean up the living room, this project is still in progress.

*I organized all the Lego magazines and instruction manuals. Some of the magazines we had 2 or 3 copies so I kept all of the copies of the current issues and recycled the older issue duplicate copies.

*Ram has done a lot of yard work recently to get our yard ready for winter-really to get our yard ready for the sprinklers to go off. Mow, weed edging, trim bushes, put down fertilizer and grass seed on the bare spots, etc.

*Ram took a load to our city "dump". It was a $9 minimum but we got our money worth with large items that did not fit in our trash can including the old toilet.

*The Lambs had played on the side of the house and we cleaned that area up, threw away trash, and spread out rocks there again.

*We did a little garage cleanup-of the main pathway and some of the toys. This is a whole big project to clean out toys they have outgrown and clean out the garage. That is not happening at this time, but at least we worked in the garage a little.

*I cleaned the front of all my kitchen cupboards. It was needed after making jam several times this summer.

*I cleaned out my kitchen towels and dishcloths. I added several to the rag pile and added new dishcloths bought at back to school sale time.

*I cleaned the laundry room. I combined old bottles of laundry detergent together. I organized my cleaning supplies that I use a lot into a caddy together.

*I began working on the pile of clothes with stains-soaking them overnight and then hanging them outside in the sun to be bleached some more. I have a couple more loads of this. I am hoping to get many of these in decent shape to either sell at the used kid store or to give away. Some were for the boys but most were outgrown.

*I almost finished all my mending pile and then more mending appeared. Ram and the Lambs noticed I was mending and remembered more that needed to be fixed. I hope to really finish the pile of mending soon.

*I scrubbed the cement on our front entrance. Something was dirty there and it looks a lot better.

*I washed all of the bedding for two Lamb beds. I still have one more Lamb bed to do plus the master bedroom bedding.

*Ram transplanted a mum in our front yard that was growing too close to the other mums. I thought it had died and bought a replacement last year. I don't know if it will make it in the new spot, but it wasn't making it so close to the other mums.

I have a lot more projects in mind. Several years ago my mom tried to go through every single drawer and closet in her house. I would like to do the same. We have started some of the projects but not finished them. We don't get very many of these projects done during the week while we are busy going to activities. I hope to continue projects during the weekends. I hope to continue to blog about our progress. All the little projects really do add up to make progress.