Decluttering ~ Day 4

If you saw me on Twitter today, then you should know about most of my progress. Oh and I have to share my ChoreBuster chores for the day:

1. Cook Breakfast & Lunch
2. Declutter House
3. Wash dishes

"Declutter house" is set to occur every 7 days, and I did not choose a start date but ironically it randomly chose today's date and me to start with. LOL.

Anywho... I had an hour of energy this morning and was able to downsize 1 giant box and 3 laundry baskets of random clothes that came over last night from the old apartment to only 2 laundry baskets (small ones) of clothes to keep. The rest will be going over to Salvation Army first thing tomorrow (they are closed today, and we just had a snow storm last night so we didn't want to leave it outside overnight).

I am also purging a small tupperware container filled with old McDonald's toys I collected as a kid (Barbies and Pokemon), two purses, and all my old Halloween outfits (yes, I kept all of them for years).

Now we are off to have dinner at a friend's house tonight. They have been helping us move, and still offer more. Once we get the house, food, etc in order over here, we will be inviting them over. Also, I am going to write a thank you note to the wife's work, Wild Side Florist. They so generously offered up the services of their delivery van and gas yesterday to help us do a day's worth of moving!

I'm back. Did you miss me?

Of course, I have to start with a cute for the day.

Above is a pic of my son being his adorable self, playing with my cell phone.

How can you not love those eyes?

Now onto my update... we are here, we are getting settled, and the Internet is back on. *Angels singing* Very poor planning on our part, however with a 1 year old, winter storms brewing, and living in a poorly heated/insulated apartment, can you really blame us for up and leaving as soon as we signed the lease to our new place? All I needed for motivation was to wake up the next morning, realize the heat was cranked to 90, but we were all still bundled up and freezing, and to feel my son's ice cold hands that I can never keep covered.

By that night, we had the two kids beds, the couch, the spare mattress, and all of our electronics moved into the new apartment. I could barely get out a post saying that we had signed the lease. However my family's health was so much more important than any of that. I can sort of relate it to a fire, only much much colder and none of our stuff was burnt.

So now, we are here with the good majority of our things moved over, and just some more of the clutter to pack up and move over here. Yes, we are taking our clutter with us. However, we have a plan in place for getting through it all.

My Plan to Declutter Our New Place

1. Everything that is not 100% essential to our everyday survival is being moved into the basement here.
2. Each day, I will bring up one bag at a time and go through it.
3. I will only keep things that are essential, and not keep things simply for material or sentimental reasons.

I have many tools and advantages at my disposal now to help me keep up with this new plan. First, as I mentioned in my previous post, Salvation Army is right across the street! A declutterer and frugal shopper's dream, right? Also, this apartment comes equipped with a dumpster right in the complex. But of course, I think it is all possible, because of the basement storage space we have. No one else uses it right now, so we are free to store as much as we need to for now. But of course my goal is to tone it down to practically nothing within the next few months.

If you want to see some pictures of our new place, click here. So far they are all of the place empty before we moved anything in. I have a few as we started moving things in, but my flickr upload limit is practically reached just with these. So, I will wait to post better ones instead.

Yay I am Moving!

Well, finally... the day has come that I was not expecting. We were finally accepted for a new apartment. We have been looking and looking and waiting (not so patiently) for something in our price range (low income) and cleaner than where we are now. I am not proud of my current abode, and do not post many pics or videos because of it.

However that is all about to change. My MIL's contact at a real estate agent actually helped us out and found us an amazingly clean and cheap apartment ($825 a month, including heat and hot water). For those of you not familiar with the market here in Central Mass, that is a deal!! Right now we are paying $650 with nothing included, and the place is a dump. Really the building should be condemned like the one next door was. I have felt depressed and guilty forcing my children to live here in such conditions, but tried my damndest and more to make it homey, comfortable, and clean. Mostly my son is confined by a puzzle gate on the area rug in the living room, which has been getting ever more difficult with his newly found walking skills.

So, anyways, I never held my breath that our credit would be accepted anywhere better, and sat here and listened while my parents, brothers, and other family members knocked the only place we could afford or be accepted to live in. (Personally, if you are not willing to help out, then really you should have no say in the situation we are in now.) But that's a different issue that will soon be history.

Of course, knowing my mother and the perfect rental units she lived in because of being a military family, she will find something, if not many things, to complain and irk me about. She means well, but she doesn't always know when to keep her perfect opinions to herself.

The new place is small, ok much smaller, than where we are now. However, I have been begging hubby to help me downsize on our clutter forever now. This is the exact incentive we need. Also, the best part about our new apartment is... Salvation Army is right across the street! How much more perfect can it get? I can donate all that old clothes from high school that I will never wear again (and never let my daughters wear), and then go inside and find some real deals on maternity clothes that actually fits me. I am happy.

So, yeah, I will try my best and keep up with posting as this was very sudden and last minute. I am a bit upset with myself that I still don't have reserve posts, however this way I can post updates on the move and how everything is going with 'the fam' in our new place. Wish us luck cramming into a smaller apartment, and if you have any tips about decorating for a very small apartment, please feel free to email me or comment here with them.