Progress, not perfection

 I am starting to work on cleaning the house with the intent of paring down our "stuff" and potentially moving in a few years.  I suppose boot camp cleaning works, and I could spend summer days doing it.  However, and hour a week on the weekend will also work.  I am motivated by visible progress.  It could be a check list, a progress bar, or a physical change.  I had yet to put Christmas items away--I just boxed up and stacked downstairs.  So I took before and after pictures of my mini success.

Before--this is the view going down into my basement.  It was my daughter's "room" when she moved back in for five years.  But the 25% as you come down the stairs was not part of her room.  We had just cleared the basement to this side.

I neatly stacked up the bins in the storage closet.  I filled a garbage and a recycle bag.  A total basement vacuum (as well as sprayed the baseboards to prevent bugs).  My granddaughter helped by running laps, assisting with supplies, and having an indoor snowball fight with grandpa and myself.  

My husband has half of his sports collectibles on those shelves (and floor) in the basement.  I won't touch those.  But I still have some stuff to work on.  Maybe some rainy week this summer I will work on purging keepsakes that have been in the same bins since the day we moved into the house nearly twenty years ago.