The Great Clean Out and a Lenten Goal.

Hey, y'all! It has been so long, SO long since I have posted here in any regular manner. Will and I are having a lazy morning at home watching Moana {we've had stomach bug and the flu at school and I am just trying to keep him well so he can go out of town this weekend!!!!} so I thought I'd update you on life and what we've been up to.

First of all, let me share about our "Great Clean Out." Eddie and I are keepers. We don't easily let go of anything. What if we need it? It's something cute that our kids made! It belonged to XYZ member of our family! There's nothing wrong with it! It was expensive! It was a gift! Etc., etc., etc. We will come up with any excuse NOT to throw something away or donate it. And over 8.5 years of marriage + life after college when you're trying to create a home we have accumulated a LOT of "stuff."

 For instance, I had seven years of kids' clothes that I had NEVER gotten rid of. Never. I had never given anything away, sold anything, or donated anything. My thought was that someone in our family might need them at some point, whether it was us, my sister, or my brother. That ship has sailed for us, Anna had a little girl, and my brother got lots of Liam, but one only needs so much. I had a TON of clothing after buying things ourselves and having my best friend give me all of her things. So back at the beginning of January I started going through it and trying to sell some of it. I have made close to $1,000 from selling children's clothing! Y'all, that's nuts! When we went to Disney in January, our hotel room was paid for JUST from selling clothes. And I'm selling them for $1-5!

Another thing I've been doing is going through each area of our house {slowly!} one at a time to decide whether to keep, donate, or sell things. We accumulated so much "sell" stuff that we had enough to have a yard sale. We had that last weekend and it was a HUGE success. I feel lighter, but I'm not done yet.

Lent started last week. If you're not familiar with Lent, it is the 40 day period (excluding Sundays) before Easter that Christians spend repenting, fasting, meditating on Scripture. It is representative of the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing for his ministry. We typically give something for Lent in order to "fast" and prepare for Easter. I thought and thought and thought and THOUGHT about what I wanted to give up for Lent this year and I couldn't come up with anything. (Except Facebook. I need to delete Facebook!) I decided that rather than giving up one thing, I would continue my Great Clean Out and work on that during Lent. SO I've made myself a calendar and have been focusing on cleaning out my house AND exercising more AND cleaning out my DVR, computer, email, etc. I've got stuff everywhere that needs cleaning out and refreshing and I'm focusing on that during this 40 days. I know that may sound crazy, but it has given me some good motivation for getting it done!

Along with the Great Clean Out, I've been trying to focus more on reading, exercising, and BLOGGING again! Yippee!!!! I'm going to work on doing this three times a week. We're so busy these days, but I know that if I don't record my memories, I'll forget about them. I love looking back at my blog. I've been doing this for NINE YEARS now, y'all. I'm hoping to be back in action!