Detox for Me, Detox for the House

Hmm - not sure why I'm blogging right now.  Wait.  Yes I do.  It is 11:00 on Monday night (see - started this post on Monday and I'm just now finally posting on Friday! It's been crazy around here - in a good way), and we are in the middle of  the most massive purge of our house. Ever.  Bags and bags and bags of garbage type of a purge.  And bags and bags and bags to UGM.  I mean this is insane.  Insane, I tell you.   But, Eric has taken a break to talk to his BFF, Paul.  (I just love that he has a BFF - they are so good for each other.)  So, I'm going to take a break to document that we did all of this cleaning.

This post is not about my two oldest when they were little.  I just put those pictures in because they are funny.  And, I know a lot of you really just want to see pictures of my kids.  And there aren't any others in this post.  Because this post is about the house detox.  I am trying to detox from the Christmas-sugar madness (yes, we have made salad for dinner every night this week.  yay us.)  And, now we are detoxing our house from the materialism madness.

The kids and I didn't leave the house much this past week.  They had the stomach flu.  Yes, all three of them.  At the same time. Uhthankyou.  For those of you who are keeping count (because aren't you all) that is three times that we've had the pukes here since August.   How does one family throw up this many times in four months?

Anyway - I have escaped the stomach bug - well for now anyway.  I guess it could still hit me but I didn't have it last week.  My point is that the kids were stuck on the couch.  So, I started cleaning and organizing.  And, I just couldn't stop.  Then Eric got in on the cleaning over the weekend.  Because we were pretty much stuck home all weekend.  And, he couldn't stop either.

I finally decided that everything that we don't use has to go.  I hate throwing things out.  It's like I freeze-up and think the kids might actually use that half-finished coloring book or eventually find the other half of the pieces that go to that puzzle (even though it hasn't happened in three years).

What was I thinking??? After 16 gigantic bags of garbage I'm exhausted, but my house contains way less stuff and I love it.  I'm on cloud nine.  I'm elated.  I'm ecstatic.  I just keep walking from room to room and opening drawers to admire how clean they are.  And leaving cupboards open just because they are organized.  Ha! My suburban is packed with its third load ready to take to the Mission.

(And, at the same time I'm kind of disgusted because how did we have this much stuff in our house, this much junk?   And, I'm not sure what we're teaching our kids about things, and the amount of toys/gadgets/stuff you need in life.  Something I'm giving a lot of thought to this year as we get organized and scale down and try to instill thankfulness in our children.  I'm not sure what exactly the Lord is doing in my heart with all of this, but it's something I'm praying through, wanting to know what He wants to show me.)

Now, when I said gigantic bags of garbage I meant this big.  Contractor size garbage bags:

Why yes - that is our Christmas tree (still up) in the background.  With a whole section of lights out.  Right after we finished decorating the tree, all of those lights went out.  And, we tried everything to fix them and nothing worked.  It is a pre-lit fake tree (oh, how un-Oregon of us) so we can't just take off the string of lights.  There was no way we were going to undecorate and get a new tree and redecorate.  So it was the year of the striped tree.

And we've been to IKEA twice now, Eric has built a ton of new furniture.  We finally replaced our broken bedroom furniture.  Our bed was broken, and my nightstand was lit-ra-lee falling apart.  We had piles and piles of books that needed shelf space.  I'm going to brag on my hubs for just a minute because he is amazing.  IKEA seems super-affordable when you are there and loading up all of the furniture.  Like, wow!  Really?  Only this much for that bedframe?  What?  But, they neglect to mention the price you pay in human sacrifice on those price tags.  Eric's poor hands. Blisters, cuts, bruises.  Since Saturday he has built 6 bookshelves, 2 nightstands, a giant dresser and a king-size bed.  This is totally a fuzzy picture - I forgot and left the flash on.  But, Eric built all of that furniture over the past few days.  Plus more that is in the kids' rooms.

Happy 2012 to us!  Now I think we'll take the rest of the year off.