...to declutter. Yep, there's something about cooler, gray, rainy days that inspire me to organize, toss, sort, separate, donate and pitch. Today our basement toy room was the subject of my autumn energy. I started with a trash bag and began pitching broken, unmatched, no-longer-loved toys. This is great to do with a handful of toddlers because they're not attached to anything! As a matter of fact...they LOVE putting things into the bag. After we pitched and sorted things back into bins and buckets, we chose a few nice toys to put up into the attic...items we're not ready to part with yet. We have a couple large toys like a dollhouse with rooms full of play furniture and people, and some antique school desks that get rotated in and out of the attic to change things up now and again. Today the school desks were put away, and the dollhouse made it's prescence known again. It's magic when an old favorite toy comes out of the attic...kids play so beautifully together, and enjoy it again. HEAVEN.
John pulled our old (but much too small) kitchen table for 6 out of storage today. It was not nice enough to donate after spending some time as the kids coloring table in the basement here, but was shuffled into storage when larger toys took it's place. Anyhow, he cut the legs down to about 18 inches or so. It's now a perfect train/lego/racetrack table for the boys to build on and the storage bins for these toys slide neatly underneath. All the boys were tickled when they came together after school and naps and spent most of the evening working together on various building projects. WONDERFUL!!
I'd like to give the basement walls a fresh coat of paint before it's too cold to keep the windows open while I work. 4 years and 10 kids in this house...and many crayons and markers later...have really shown some wear. Maybe I can work my way around, one wall at a time getting that painting done during nap times. The last couple years we've had our Christmas tree down there because it gives us more space to spread out and yet still be together on Christmas morning. It would be nice to have it freshened up before then. We'll see how much time and energy I can muster up.
Of course I still need to get through closets and clothes...a seemingly never-ending battle. It's a wonderful reminder though, of all the blessings and God's providence. He does provide, often times in ways we could not imagine. But certainly our needs are met.
I'm reminded of Psalm 23. My cup does indeed overflow!
