Welcoming Spring and Spring Cleaning and Decluttering Update

Spring is off to a nice start around here. Some much needed rainy weather has finally arrived, and although I love the sunny days we've been having, we definitely need some rain, it is Oregon after all! The birds have certainly been enjoying the cooler weather. This past week the finch have returned, and this beautiful red headed finch was hanging around the garden looking for seeds.

He was so pretty I had to sit and watch him for awhile. His red looked especially pretty among the red buds of my little tree.

Mr. Thrush has been visiting quite frequently, and I finally got some good pictures of his markings. Thrush have the most interesting song, every morning I can hear him calling from the trees behind our yard, their call is very distinct and interesting, here is a link to listen to the varied thrush call (you have to scroll down the page on the link a bit.)

This robin was hunting worms under our globe spruce a couple days ago, the kids and I watched him pull out a rather good sized worm. We all felt bad for the worm, but we were glad the robin found food, and I was happy that my garden, which needed a lot of soil improvement when I moved in, is finally home to plenty of earthworms!

I've been so busy with my big spring organizing project I had no time to post about our St. Patrick's day celebration. Even though we were busy with projects around the house, I still put out our decorations and had a nice feast of corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and soda bread, with lime cake for dessert. We all took the time to watch one of my favorite Irish themed movies, The Secret of Roan Inish, it was a fun day. :)

My decluttering project is really coming along nicely, at the end of February I decided to give up 40 bags of Clutter in 40 days, I thought it would be challenging because I actually declutter fairly regularly, but it turns out we still had plenty to get rid of, and it amazes me what an average sized closet can hold! For inspiration in my cleaning goals, last week I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, what a great book! I had hesitated buying it after reading some reviews that felt it was too simplified, but I am glad I went ahead and read it. This book about tidying was quick to read, and had some wonderful suggestions about how to organize, and really simplify your home. Marie Kondo is a Japanese cleaning consultant, and has come up with a really unique system for going through your home. One of her suggestions is to start with clothing, and to remove everything from your closet, every article of clothing, and lay it all out and go through it one item at a time, only keeping clothing that you really love and use and you feel positive about. So that is what I did with my kids this week, they took turns emptying the contents of their closet into the living room to be sorted.

Like I said it is amazing what a closet can hold! We really thinned out their clothing, as well as their school papers, keepsakes and other things. Since both my kids are young adults, we moved out the last of their old toys, some to charity, and some to be kept for memorabilia (but not too much!). :)

Between all of our closets, we reclaimed a multitude of hangers! I use all black hangers so the closets look uniform, and I usually have to buy a new pack or two a year, mostly because my Labrador Zoey likes to grab any hanger that has fallen and bite it in half as fast as she can. It is the weirdest thing, she can ruin a hanger in a matter of seconds with me right there asking her to drop it! Labs, fun and kooky companions! Anyway, we will not be needing to buy any new hangers for quite some time. I bundled up our extras with black zip ties, in groups of ten, and will store them out in my garage for future use.

My son had set out a Lego toy to get rid of, and it was sitting near my pile of hangers, it looked like some mini hanger excavating project, so I had to take pictures. :)

This week we got rid of eleven more bags of clutter, bringing the total to 32 bags, and that is not including all of the paper recycling we've done, the house is definitely feeling lighter! I have a feeling getting the last eight bags will be pretty easy, next week I'll be heading out to the garage storage to go through my totes and see what I can thin out. We are still putting the finishing touches on the new office layout, and I hope to have it done by Easter weekend. I have decided to continue decluttering after Easter until I have gone through the whole house, I was really inspired by Marie Kondo's book to get the whole house done completely, you can read more about The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up through my Amazon affiliate link in the side bar, it is definitely a great book for being inspired to tidy up. :)

Who else is working on spring cleaning this week?

Linking to:
Homeacre Hop
Home Sweet Home
Feathered Nest Friday
No Rules Weekend Party Blog Hop
Think Tank Thursday
It's a Party
Home and Garden Thursday 
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