jettisoning and the wall that will never be

It seems I was storing quite a bit of stuff at Granny's house, so because we had driven to Iowa, my mom and I went through it and packed up six boxes for me to take home with us.  It's truly amazing the amount of insignificant rubbish I thought important enough to save at some point.

Once we got home I decided to clean out the basement to organize and eliminate more of my meaningless possessions.  It feels SOOOOO good to be rid of so much stuff that was cluttering my life.  Just because it wasn't in clear view, does not mean that it wasn't cluttering my mind/life.  It was very freeing to take account and reorganize. 

BEFORE:  

AFTER:

That's it!  And the top bin is still empty.  About a third of the boxes in the before picture are empty, but still, it's incredible to me to see how much condensing and discarding was possible. I even got all of our Christmas decorations/ornaments into the green containers.  One container is Gabe's memorabilia, and the other four are mine.  Disproportionate, I know, but still worlds better than before.

Here are the after pictures of a white wall I painted in one of our school's girls' bathrooms just before going to Iowa.  I spent five hours creating a mural I thought girls would really enjoy. Our school beautification committee wanted to brighten up the bathrooms, among other things. The principal agreed to pay me to come in and do some painting.  But thanks to district policies this is now the before picture to a newly painted white wall.  Just like every other wall in our building.  Five hours for nothing.  Kids will never even know this was here.  Bummer, huh?