Organizing...

So my days for working at home are now numbered.  The number today is 2.  Today and tomorrow and then on Monday I go back to my office at Boeing.  It will be good to be back among people but it has also been pleasant to sleep a little later because I didn't have to commute in to work.

My mom sent me an early birthday present this week.  It was some containers from the container store in Dallas.  (Or it might have been a container store in some suburb of Dallas.)  Anyway, I got those four containers and started organizing some of my kitchen stuff.  One of them was to put tea bags in, one was for those little packets like gravy and taco mix, the other two were the Good Grips POP containers.  Those two had that special lid that seals when you press in on the top button.   Very cool containers.  I had fun organizing my oatmeal in one and my tassimmo coffee and cream in the other.

Well, needless to say, that spurred on a lot of other organizing.  I realized that I have just TONS of different shampoos, mouses, hair sprays, lotions, gels and creme rinses that I have bought, tried, didn't like for one reason or another and couldn't bring myself to throw away.  So, I gathered them all up into a box and it looked like this when I was done.

I sorted through them and ended up with a trash bag full of products that I didn't think we would ever use (most of them were almost empty...those were times when I would buy a new one because I was almost done with the other one and couldn't wait to try the new one...sigh...so bad.).  So, here's the trash...

And here is all that is left.

Then of course, I couldn't stop there...next I dove under the bathroom sinks in the master bath.  Okay, not literally but figuratively.  When we moved to Huntsville in 2007, I was here working when they packed up the house in Florida (Tom stayed behind to get it all packed up by the movers) and everything got packed whether it should have been or not.  I probably would have weeded through stuff before the move but that's just the way I am.  Anyway, things were hectic when we were moving into the house so that stuff just got unpacked and put somewhere.  I found medicine under the sink that dated back to 1997.  So I proceeded to through all the outdated stuff out and other stuff that I had no idea what it even was.  It is totally amazing the junk that we hang onto.  Under Tom's sink there was this cardboard box with stuff in plastic bags from trips that we have taken over the years.  (You know how you have to have 2 oz liquids to take on airplanes and for security reasons you can't have more than that....we had all kinds of baggies of that kind of stuff.) 

I don't have before pictures (thank goodness because they were BAD) but here are some after pictures.  I had been given this really neat basket from my coworkers filled with care packages when I was first diagnosed with cancer and I used it to replace the cardboard box that he had under his sink.

 Under my sink after the purging...and no...that isn't really a box of cheese under there...I turned that box into a holder for tubes of stuff like hydrocortisone creme, etc.

I still haven't found a place to put the old shampoos, creme rinses, or lotions.  I know that pantry in the master bathroom will have to be my next purge (muwha wha...evil laugh) and they will probably end up there.  I have two more days to get that kind of stuff done.  As I said, my days are numbered...8-)  Thanks, Mom, for motivating me to organize and clean up the hidden clutter.  8-)

By Grace Alone -

Teresa