Purge!

blog blast post by motherbumper

For the past three weekends, I've been meaning to do what seems for me to be harder than attaining Hanna freakin' Montana tickets - I've been trying to start that so called "Spring Cleaning" and purging.  My new tune is "Simplify my Life" (sung to Madonna's "Justify my love" because I'm totally stuck in the 80's).  But seriously - for me, there is no spring in this cleaning but there's lots of purge - it's like a big ol' heap of nauseatingly overwhelming frustration mixed with lots of sneeze-inducing dust.

But the purge and clean is long over due (like three years overdue, which coincides with my plunge into parenthood.  Related? Hmmmm I'll have to think on that one). This time, when I do the stress-relieving, zen inducing, but completely crazy to achieve cleaning, I want to do it correctly.  And by correctly I mean no shoving into another closet/under beds/ behind furniture kinda cleaning - I mean actual movement of objects to better homes.

A la my favourite HGTV addiction Neat, in my dream clean/purge job, we would take the contents of the entire apartment and divide it up into three huge piles in our living room. One pile STORAGE, another pile GARBAGE, and another pile RECYCLE.  *cue angels singing, small woodland creatures scurrying to my feet, and wee birds flitting around my hair for my environmentally friendly endeavours*

Garbage of course will be a small pile because that would mean less landfill, storage would be just the right amount with room to spare in my limited closet space, and the recycling pile will be amazing.  Oh and the physical movement of these piles - especially recycling which requires more effort - would happen with incredible ease.

But so far the reality has been:  For the past three weekends, I've been too sick or too busy to do anything about it. And all this freakin' snow isn't helping. 

All the clothing that I want to drop at the charity boxes are hard to reach over the snow banks and unshovelled sidewalks (yeah mr. neighbour guy, I'm lookin' at you).  So I have yet to actually get rid of much of the clutter in my life. 

I want to find homes for all the stuff that isn't trashed.  I want to make beautiful storage for the stuff we want to keep.  I want this: *cue Handel's Messiah*

Since that little slice of heaven isn't going to happen any time soon I'm going to do this instead:

• Massive heaps of papers that are everywhere: purge anything that doesn't need to be kept, shred only the actual confidential text and recycle the rest
• Clothing: charity all the gently used pieces
• Household stuff incl. furniture: see if any charity with pick up needs it, give away, donate to rummage sale
• Purge the toys (already done - I feel so accomplished)
• Organize, organize, organize and find an attractive way to store it
• Be more responsible when it comes to shopping - need vs want, packaging, all aspects of environmental impact
• Participate in Eco Moms Act by finding way to reduce, reuse, and recycle for Blog Hers Act Canada's Eco-Fashion Month

That's what I have on my list so far and I think it's a pretty good list if I say so myself (and I did, so there).  Oh and I'm also totally up for someone giving me that closet for free - and a house to go around it.

Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

If I could actually pull of my dream clean purge, when it came to the recycling aspect the online community called Zwaggle would be totally cool to use.  How Zwaggle works is you get points when you give your gently used things to other families, then you use those points to get "new" stuff for your family.  Sounds cool doesn't it?  Check out how you can join Zwaggle, who also are the sponsors for today's Blog Blast on saving, sharing, and simplifying - which inspired this post - over at the the Parent Bloggers Network and there are prizes to be won - go on over and check it out for the deets.