DeCluttering in the New Year

It's only 12 days into the new year, and yet it seems like Christmas was forever ago! We're back into the routine here at Casa Dawg.

Classes have started again, and both the ones I'm taking this semester seem pretty interesting. They also don't appear to be hugely work laden, and for that I am grateful.

The weight loss journey has slowed down a bit, but there have been no gains. That's good news I guess. I'm still enjoying working out and will be using the six personal fitness coaching sessions that HB bought me for Christmas to keep me going with the coach until the summer. My goal is to be able to join him in competitive paddling this summer. I can actually feel a muscle developing in my leg. It is such a foreign feeling to me that I actually thought it was a knot that needed to be massaged out. I'm enjoying this working out stuff so much that I actually feel I'm letting down the fat girls don't exercise club I've been president of most of my life. Strange sensation this enjoying getting healthy.

We've also been focusing on decluttering the house. I have never in my life known anyone that can collect as much clutter as we do here in Casa Dawg. No, that's not true. Once I helped a friend clean out the home of his elderly grandparents after the grandfather passed away. He had been on the maintenance staff of a local university, and had made it his habit to bring home anything that students left behind when they vacated their dorm rooms. And I do mean anything. There was a basement apartment in their home that was literally stacked floor to ceiling with stuff. Just stuff. Literally stacked - no lying here. There was a path through the stuff to get to the back of the apartment, but you didn't know what all was in there. The same was true for his garage. I swore we were going to find a Studabaker under all the stuff in the garage.

HB is an amazing stuff collector. Prior to moving in here, he had been storing his stuff in one of those rented lockers. On the day of his move here, he arrived quite excited saying "I had a couch! Who knew???" Apparently, there it was, under all the stuff. Quite a nice couch too.

So today, my sister will arrive to take some of our stuff home to her place, to add to her stuff. I'm hell bent that we will not replace this stuff with more stuff. I finally have the rec room in a place where we can have company and not feel embarrassed. HB has promised me that this weekend, he is going to go through the basement and finish tossing out stuff. I'll be away on a girls weekend. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, here is the "during" picture of the journey to declutter HB's basement. I really really wish I had taken a before picture. I'm sure you wouldn't believe it!