Since Christmas, we have been getting our house ready to put on the market.  And let me tell you, it needed some major work.  Well, okay, nothing major major, but it needed some help.  I am a total saver.  I save everything.  And everytime I’ve moved I’ve thought to myself that this would be a great time to go through things and throw out what I don’t really want.  Well, I also love to pack, it’s like organizing.  So, I would get caught up in packing and get tired of having to slowly go through things and decide if I want them or not that I would convince myself that I could go through and throw things away while I was unpacking.  Yeah…that never happened either.  So, I basically had a house full of crapola.  NOT ANYMORE!   I have finally rid myself of lots of things I don’t need.  I had lots of conversations with myself that went something like this :

Save-it Me: Oh, I totally forgot I had this!
Get-Rid-of-it Me: Yea, it’s nice, but you don’t need it.
Save-it Me: But, I might, you never know.  Plus if I keep it here, I can run across it again someday and be pleasantly surprised that I forgot I had it.
Get-Rid-of-it Me: You haven’t thought about it for a long time, you haven’t used it or touched for a long time, I don’t think you are going to miss it.
Save-it Me: Ok, fine, but the next thing I find, I’m keeping it.

So, after lots of internal debates, I have finally purged myself of a ton of stuff.  All those bridesmaid dresses…gone!  Donated to a place that gives them to girls who can’t afford prom dresses.  Lots of clothes and shoes…donated (shoes from before my foot operation that I can no longer wear anymore - why did I keep those???), lots of papers that were from my ATT Wireless/Cingular days that got moved to the house when I was working from home…all recycled!  The list goes on and on.  I think Royal was happy I finally cleaned it up.  He’s not one to complain, but he seemed to be pretty happy when we were finished. 

For the most part, I’m pretty picked up and organized.  Even if it’s junk or useless stuff, it’s organized and put away neatly.  I used to tell people, “Oh, being organized isn’t just a hobby, it’s more of a way of life.  We’re kinda involved”.   Although, there is one area of my life I really don’t even try to organize.  That would be my closet.  If anyone knows me very well, or has ever taken a step into my bedroom or closet, they know that I don’t really use my closet.  My closet is more of a place to store all the clothes that I don’t wear, and the clothes that I do wear are in piles usually on top of the dresser (yet another place to store clothes I don’t wear).  These piles make lots of sense to me.  I can find things really quickly.  Royal though, doesn’t quite get it, if he moves a pile or adds something to a pile, he gets a real dirty look from me, because he has probably thrown the whole system off and the next morning when I’m going to get a specific article of clothing, I can’t find it.  However, once I cleaned out the clothes I wasn’t going to keep, my closet was kind of empty, so for the sake of selling the house I have put all my clothes in the dresser and closet.  And so far, they have stayed there.  They haven’t attempted to get out and start a pile, I think they like it in there.

Some other things we have done is buy some new curtains.  We needed them real, real bad.

Then my most favorite project of all!  I have been wanting to finish this for a long time, but I couldn’t convince Royal to let me just go out and buy it and start the project.  Mostly because I knew I would need his help, and Royal doesn’t like doing these kinds of projects.  Painting, hanging curtains, etc… he’s not too excited about.  He would be happy in a white walled, curtainless house.  Me?  Not so much, I do not want to feel like I am living in a fish bowl, and I’d like the insides to have color and happiness all over the walls!  So, finally, I got to go out and buy some chair rail moulding!  I painted the dining room and living room 2 different colors (as you can see from the pictures above) with the intentions all along of putting moulding up to split the colors and finally we are dong it!  I’m so excited, I think it looks great.  I don’t know what the heck I’m doing, but I borrowed a chop saw from Royal’s brother and so far, we’ve got one wall done!  It only took us like 2 1/2 hours to get it right, but we did it!  Wooo hooo!  Here’s a picture of our finished wall!  Now all we need to do is finish the rest and our house will be ready to go!