Good News, A Pile And A Party

As I begin this post, I feel led to remind you, gentle reader, that it takes a certain level of humility to engage in full disclosure in such a public arena. What I am about to share, I do because I feel compelled to in order to encourage and inspire others to tackle the difficult areas of their lives. Well, that, and...I'm just really excited to have this accomplished!

For far too long now, since about the New Year's Flu, I have had on my sidebar a goal of eliminating 80% of the contents of our attic. On a seemingly unrelated note, our schoolroom/playroom was converted into the Yard-Sale-Waiting-To-Happen Room back in February. When it became probable that we will have a house full of overnight company next month, I realized we'd better get busy on the attic and the yard sale, to clear up the extra space in the house. I really couldn't procrastinate any longer.

So without further ado, I present to you the before, during and after shots of what will henceforth be known in our family as the Attic Attack. Starting early, before the attic did it's impersonation of an oven, first on the agenda was to empty the attic so we wouldn't have to work in the heat. Here's what the attic looked like before we began:

Mom stayed in the attic and chucked lowered boxes, etc. down to the boys, who neatly stacked piled the attic contents in part of the family room. The good news is that by the time we got the attic emptied, it looked like this:

The bad news is, the Family Room looked like this:

After blocking the TV, the front door, and two couches in the process of emptying the attic, we sorted and purged most of the attic contents. A little forethought allowed us to tie a rope onto Mom's leg before attacking this pile, in case she didn't make it back out. After several hard days of keeping the kids out of the junk boxing and bagging, we are happy to announce that we got the Family Room (and the entire house) back in shape in time for Sabbath dinner on Friday night.

Note to Self: Remind kids of this process before next trip into town. And myself!
Note to my Children: Yes, we will be having a party to celebrate. Just let me catch my breath first.