simplify

**Thanks for the nice comments yesterday.
And, yes, Natalie--that Grayskull. :) Glad you liked that.**

Lately I've been in the mood to throw things out. Not that I am feeling wasteful, I just feel this deep urge to seriously de-clutter and purge a lot of my "things".
I have always had a hard time throwing things out (aside from obvious trash like wrappers and such). I am one of those people who develop strong emotional attachments to things, even silly junk like a church program from a specific date, or a tiny strip of paper that I got sophomore year, it shows the only A I ever got in math (also known as my worst subject.)

I love this face I have always been pretty set, even happy, in my hoarding ways, but something is changing in me. I think it started when we moved here. We had cable at our last apartment, that was included in rent. The TV was on all the time. I stayed up late to watch, I watched all day, it was a problem. We didn't have that when we moved here. No cable or satellite system was included in rent and we didn't want to pay for it. Along with that, our TV wasn't picking up local channels, thanks to the DTV switch. We decided that it would be the best to go cold turkey.
In the first few weeks I hardly noticed. I was busy with un-packing and my two small children, and there wasn't really time to notice that something was missing. The TV was still, occasionally on, for movies, but the amount of time it was on had significantly decreased. By the time things settled down after the move, I didn't even notice what I was "missing" anymore. What I did notice was that my home seemed more calm and quiet. That is a great feeling, and to think, by having the TV on all the time before, I was missing out on this!
For several months I felt like that was enough, and I floated on the high I felt due to the quiet. But I've noticed recently that I am becoming restless.I feel like I am searching for more of that quiet. I've been realizing that I will find that quiet in the absence of all the junk I've been accumulating.

they sleep so silly I've been working myself into this mindset of simplify for a few months now. It began with my sheer annoyance and disdain towards loud, flashy children's toys. It was easy to get rid of those. That led to going through all of the toys, to weed out broken or neglected toys (something I need to do again.) Then I went through their clothes, preparing bags of clothes that they just don't wear, to be donated.
As I got rid of some of the kids junk I started to wonder how much of the baby gear that we had was really needed. Sure, I had a new baby coming, but I had never truly loved my infant tub, so I got rid of that. I never missed it either. Zeke bathed in the sink until he got too big, and now I just put him in the bath tub with a small amount of water. Another thing I'm trying to ditch: my waste of space and money (for refills) diaper pail. Just because I have a bunch of kids doesn't mean I have to be bogged down by loads of unnecessary baby gear.

he is such a sweetheart My big problem, now, is getting started. Even the small amount that I purged from the kids things was freeing. I felt motivated to go through my own clutter, then I opened my closet door. Yikes!
Wish me luck.