I thought about not writing this preview at all because I’m going to fly by the seat of my pants this month. School ends in a few weeks, and I’m feeling crazed because of the usual mix of end-of-the-year activities. Emma’s dance recital is next weekend, and even though her costumes cost more than my prom dress, I still need to make some small alterations to one of them. Her school only goes up to second grade, so we’re now in the thick of activities to get the kids acclimated to the new school while saying goodbye to the old one.

So this month I’m not going to make any specific plans. We have this lovely vision in our driveway:

The remains of the shed, and more.

Even though we just had a bulk garbage pick-up, they wouldn’t take everything. Bob’s wanted to tear down our old rickety shed for years, and last week he ordered the dumpster and did it. The former owners put the shed on a wooden platform, which was rotting, so that went in the dumpster too along, with a good amount of junk from inside the shed, most from the old owners. Why we kept all this crap for ten years, I don’t know. And I don’t know why I didn’t take pictures, probably because it was his project and not mine.

Today Emma and I began sorting through her clothes. I’ve not been keeping up with folding the laundry, and I’ve realized that Emma just has way too many clothes. Reading the section of Simplicity Parenting also made me decide to focus on narrowing down her wardrobe. I started with her shirts:

This is just shirts.

And added more shirts.

This is nuts.

I then sorted by short and long sleeves. She has twenty short sleeve shorts. TWENTY. Sorting them was a failure, as we were only able to put two into the donation box. A few barely fit her, but she refused to part with them. For now I’m ok with that because once they do not fit at all there will be no debate and they will not be replaced.

We had a lot more success with dresses and long sleeve tops. Pants were easy too because a few really didn’t fit her and a few only matched tops she didn’t want any more. I think she has exactly enough shorts. Even though she still has too many t-shirts, we narrowed down everything else and you can see the difference. I don’t need to buy her anything for the summer, which I am happy about. Everything fit in the dresser.

There’s still a lot of decluttering and donating to be done, but for the first time, I’m seeing a difference. Categories of things which need homes are emerging. For example, both my mom and Bob’s mom often send Emma cards and letters, which I’d like to keep for her. They end up in random piles, but I want to make a defined spot for them. I’ve also whittled down my knick-knacks, and even though I’m not done purging, I want to do a better job of organizing the ones I want to keep but may not want to display all the time.

So while I’m not really making plans for the month, I’m going to think about what I want to accomplish for the week. Since the end of the school year is coming, I’m going to work on papers for the rest of this week, and finding things to put in the dumpster.