I've got no pictures for this, but my kicking out the clutter initiative has kicked into high gear in the past few weeks.  My family has been cleaning out an old storage building that's falling in behind my grandmother's house, and my husband and I are moving to another city.  (Closer to "home" home and his work; I will be commuting for his last year of school.)  The sacking of the storage building has been wild.  Since the ceiling is slowly but surely collapsing, most of the things that were in there have ruined.  We filled up one dump truck already, burned about another dump truck load of old cardboard boxes and beautiful but utterly ruined vintage fabric, and we've managed to save a few 'treasures'.  Some old family pictures that somehow escaped unscathed.  Some old toys of my mother's.  Countless old glass bottles and vases.  Some of the not-so-treasures?  Snake skins.  Rat nests.  Wasps.  Bees.  More bees.  Moldy pillows that crumble at the touch.  The previously mentioned vintage fabric that was filled with moth and rat holes and covered in mildew.  My grandmother didn't realize how bad the state of the building was, and it's really been a learning experience for all of us about what to save and what not to save.  (And when to throw it out.)
 
My husband's and my move is going to be a slow thing.  We're not going to be out of our current place until the end of May, so I'm going to stay there during the week while he's at the new place.  It isn't the greatest set-up, but it's easier on gas and our sleep schedules.  He's got a bed, a table, and some chairs at the new place, and I'm bringing a load of stuff in my van each time I drive there.  The whole process is forcing me to clean up and clean out, and since we've got two months, I can do it at my own pace while making time for work, school, and state of mind.  I'm tackling a dresser in our bedroom tonight.
 
Oh, and I'm getting a baby niece today.  :)  Happy thoughts and prayers to my sister-in-law!

Kicking Out the Clutter: Combining Decluttering with Craftiness

One of my favorite bloggers has recently started a 'Kick Out the Clutter' initiative.  I thought it was a neat idea, and I decided to finally take some action this weekend.  I finally threw out some old cardboard boxes I'd been saving; some were for items that I thought I might need to return whose return date is long expired and the others were just good cardboard boxes I thought someone might need if they were moving.  After they were gone, I couldn't believe how much space was freed up!  I'm still on a pretty big sewing kick, and so I combined my next decluttering project with a sewing a project: a memory quilt.  I had planned to do this with high school t-shirts, then undergrad t-shirts, then law school t-shirts...you get the idea.  But it just never got done; partly because I couldn't decide which shirts to use and partly out of sheer laziness.  Well, this weekend I picked twelve of my white, grey, and red shirts from my entire University of Alabama experience and slaughtered them with a pair of shears and a rotary cutter.  I saved only squares from the back and any small design that may have been on the front, and this was what ended up on the cutting room floor:
 

I considered saving what was left for scraps, but I don't like to use jersey material unless of I have to (i.e. when making quilt blocks out of it), so I tossed the pile.  And It.  Felt.  So.  Good.  I didn't really get started on the memory quilt yet (I'm finishing up a quilted sewing machine cover right now), but I did clear out a heck of a lot of drawer space simply by getting rid of the parts of the shirts I didn't need anymore.  I'm not sure what my next Kicking Out the Clutter project will be since I could just walk in my front door and pick a corner or surface, but I hope it feels just as satisfying as this one did.