Spring Cleaning in a Frugal World

It's finally starting to get nice outside, and I have been motivated to de-clutter our house and get things going towards a yard sale. Not only will that reduce the amount of crap we have piled up everywhere, it will also bring a little bit of cash to the snowball.

Yesterday I attacked the mountain of toys in our house and rounded up all the pieces to things that would complete the sets and put those aside for the impending yard sale. I also attacked the pile of kids books. We have so many books piled up that it's just unreal. I emptied out the kid's bookshelf, grabbed all the books off of Nathan's dresser, and all of the books from Lauren's closet. I literally had a mountain of books around me!

I sorted out all of Nathan's older kid books for him and put those in the bookshelf that we keep in his closet (to protect them from the little kids) and he has so many books that I've picked up at yard sales, book fairs, and book orders that I was stunned at just how many there were once I got them all in one place. He was stunned too, and it was like seeing them for the first time all over again. I was thrilled when he started pawing through them and grabbing ones to read.

Then to attack the baby books. I made a tub of board and soft books that Nick and Lauren can play with and put those in the living room. Again, where did all of these come from??? I know I donated a huge pile to our church last year, so it's like they were breeding in the closet or something!

Finally it was time to sort out the books that are too babyish for Nathan, but not quite able to be handled by a toddler. I kept quite a few that I know that the kids will enjoy reading, but still ended up with 2 large grocery bags of books that I doubt we'll ever open and duplicates. I emailed Nathan's teacher from last year and told her that they were hers for the taking and anything she didn't want she could dump in the teacher's lounge at work since I have yet to meet a teacher who could pass up books for their classroom library.

Believe it or not, the sorting of the books and toys took me nearly 2 hours! At least I feel like I am making progress, one baby step at a time!