Spring Cleaning The Attic

Last updated on July 13th, 2021 at 12:53 pm

Spring Cleaning The Attic

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One of my March Goals was to join Project Simplify all month in order to deal with my clutter piles. So when I saw the Spring Cleaning Challenge over at The Finer Things in Life, I just had to take part too!

For one thing, the prizes they are offering for taking part are amazing, but most importantly is that my home really needs a lot of help, and having to blog about my progress is extremely motivating for me.

As I shared yesterday, God has been really speaking to my heart lately about having focus. Lately I have had a lot of ideas rolling around but no plan of attack. I have not been snail pacing I have been rabbit trailing.

While I was in the shower after my morning run Saturday, with plans of attacking the attic clutter in my head, I heard God clearly whisper, “let it all go”. I knew right away what he wanted me to let go of.

I have been holding onto tonnes of kids clothes that I keep thinking I will drop off at a consignment store or price and sell at a consignment sale, or sell at my own yard sale.However, the piles were becoming overwhelming and I needed to make a clean sweep so as to regain my focus, on spending my working hours, blogging.

By the time I decided that giving all those clothes away was what I needed to do my husband was just leaving to do some errands. I told him to drive by the local thrift store and see how long they were open for donations. He called me from outside the thrift store saying I had 1 hour to get my stuff out on the front porch for him to load it up and drop it all off.

I knew I was in trouble since this is what my attic looked like:

You see our attic is where everyone just stuffs things. Clothes that no longer fit, books no longer needed, Christmas decorations, camping supplies, golfing gear, soccer gear, and much much more, all stuffed in our attic.

 I knew I had to work fast if I was going to get this done in an hour. I sprang into action. First I delegated work to the only child available (and oh how he was wishing he wasn’t).

I gave him the job of repacking the clothes from my plastic totes into banana boxes that I found empty in the attic.

I worked as fast as I could running up the two flights of stairs to the attic, grabbing totes of clothes, running down to flights of stairs and out the door to the front porch where my son furiously repacked all the clothes into the stash of cardboard banana boxes.

I also grabbed the stack of clothes I had in our upstairs hallway, and the tote full of clothes from our bedroom.

With just 10 minutes left, my husband showed up and started loading the boxes onto the truck. I quickly did a final scan of the attic for anything left to give. I also grabbed a few things from the basement and quickly filled a box with clothes from my closet.

In less than one hour I managed to fill the entire back of my husbands full size pick up truck. I was astonished and tired and dripping with sweat!

But I pressed on! I went back up to the attic, and started to organize what was left. I worked till I heard those fabulous words “honey, I decided to go ahead and make lunch for us all and its ready, come down and eat”.

After refueling, I went back and continued to organize the attic, and in the process even removed a few piles out of our bedroom.

At the end of 5 hours of work, I called it a day and took a shower! and said “lets eat out”.

My husband says the after pictures are not amazing, and he is right, but the most important thing was accomplished and that was gaining a clear walkway down all three wings of my attic.

I still need to put the trash in the alley, but trash day isn’t till Friday. I also need to get the kids to help me take the boxes to the curb come recycling day this week, but for now I am happy with the progress.

Sure I could get rid of more, and I will when it cool downs a bit up there (loving this spring weather but it doesn’t have to get that warm before our attic gets sauna like), but for now I am going to just stand back and enjoy the few inches, no lets make that yards of progress I made in a day.

Now to decide what area to attack next Saturday.

How about you? Do you have a few projects that seem overwhelming that perhaps you just need to clean sweep?