Packing and Purging

Today I focused on getting the den, "picture presentable". In our current house we have this wonderful built-in book case/ counter top system. It is great for storage and for knick knack displays, pictures and so forth. But a realtor is coming to take pictures of the house on Wednesday afternoon. The owner is putting the house on the market to sell. So they want to take some indoor and outdoor photos for the listing. So today I cleared the den of personal things and boxed them up.
I panicked a little at first when the realtor called because the house is no where near picture ready. We had just torn the place up over the weekend getting the things John needed to take with him to IN, so the place was a wreck. The girls and I cleaned up a bit and I tried to focus on the rooms that they would most likely want pictures of. By Wednesday we should have things in decent shape.
Yesterday I took about 10 bags of clothing and shoes to Goodwill. I normally save all the girls things and pass them down from one kid to the next. But lately I have found that even my second born who only gets one set of hand-me-downs has way too many clothes! You buy a couple of new things each season and then that ends up being the only set of clothes the child will wear anyways so why am I saving these clothes? Well, not any more! I decided to only save the special items or nice church clothes and such. No more tshirts and play clothes will be passed down.
It as amazing how much space I freed up in our closets and plastic bins! This is an important factor right now because where we are headed has very limited closet and storage space. I am trying to limit the amount of things we take with us this time. There were too many boxes that came with us from TN that were never opened or used. No need in carrying them around with us anymore.
I found it amusing though. As I was going thru things my kids would ask me if I was making a pile for the garage sale. You see in the past we would always have a big garage sale and get rid of a bunch of things. I laughed - no garage sale this time. Just give it away. The girls were upset, they wanted to have a garage sale. They used to complain when I would sell their stuff - now they are the ones who want to do it. Oh Lord, I've created little mini-me monsters.