Just Another Post About Organizing

Are you guys starting to get annoyed with me talking about organizing?  Because I'm sort of starting to annoy myself.  But, I seriously can't help it!  I'm still working in circles - I have about four different organization projects going right now - but it feels good to get some things done.  And, I'm even getting David into it.  {And, if you know David very well, you'll know that he holds on to a lot of things and it's hard for him to want to get rid of them.  He's organized, but he's also a bit of a pack rat.}  On Sunday, I was able to get him really WORKING {instead of just looking at them and reminiscing} and he helped add some stuff to our Goodwill pile.  {We actually might even be having a garage sale with our friends Ken & Katie next weekend -- see if we can make $20 off of this stuff!}

This weekend, we went through cookbooks, magazines, jewelry, PS2 games, old pictures and even tackled a few kitchen cabinets and the hall closet.  That closet was 2/3 full of David's old coats and jackets -- many of which had belonged to his grandfather.  Check out this sweet coat!

How Euro does he look??

I am SO proud of him for being able to part ways with some of this stuff.

Olivia and I headed out to Target this morning to pick up some storage tubs for all of my picture books and novels that were still in cardboard boxes from over 4 years ago!  {I should own stock in Sterilite!} They were driving me crazy in the boxes because I couldn't SEE what was inside them and I knew there were more books that I wanted to pull out for Olivia, but going through 10 cardboard boxes to find them wasn't sounding like a whole lot of fun.  Well, the nesting/organizing fever took over and I just knew it was the next thing I needed to tackle.

When Olivia went down for her nap, I started in on the boxes.  Unfortunately, she didn't take an extra long nap and I had to bring her out to the garage amidst the huge mess!  Thank goodness she likes to look at books, so I pulled a few for her to look at and plopped her down in a lawn chair while I put a few more books away.

{Sorry it is so blurry - all I had was my cell phone out there and I was NOT about to let her just do whatever she wanted with the books while I went in to find my camera!}

Holy MESS!

I started out by sorting some of the books by author - I had tons of Arthur, Franklin and Amelia Bedelia books and others by popular artists like Tomie DePaola, Patricia Polacco, and Steven Kellogg.  I also had a bunch of books where I had two copies {perfect for avoiding fights between my two girls}, so I sorted those and put them in a tub.  {Most of these books are ones I inherited when my mom and one of her colleagues retired from teaching kindergarten, so they often times had the same books.} I then put the other "single" picture books in another tub.  This left me with this giant pile:

See all of those books in the plastic bags?  Yeah, those are books that I have anywhere between 2 and 5 copies of AND a copy of it read on tape.  We either need to get a tape player {other than the Walkman seen in that picture} or see if we can get digital copies of them.  I went through these and wrote each of the titles down {something that is on my to-do list for when my parents come out in a couple of weeks for the rest of the books} so I can put them in an Excel spreadsheet.  {I told you I was getting annoying!}  All the books with tapes are organized in baggies and are filling up two more tubs.  Turns out, I have SIXTY-SEVEN sets of these books on tape.  I'm seriously thinking of starting my own library.

I still have 3 or 4 more cardboard boxes to go through.  Most of those have novels in them and one box is almost full of my mom's old Nancy Drew books!  I only have one empty tub left, so it looks like we'll be making another Target run pretty soon.

I LOVE that we have all of these books.  When I was teaching, I probably only purchased about 20 books.  I was so lucky to inherit all of these.  {Thanks MOM!} I did get some new ones from Scholastic points when my kids would purchase books for themselves, but I know I barely spent any money on books.  And now, I can't bring myself to selling them.  Even the ones I have multiple copies for.  If I go back to teaching, these are going to be great to have.  And, in the meantime, they are surely going to be well-used by our kiddos.

So, the next couple days will consist of me organizing more and sorting through the stuff to see what should be given away and what might actually sell.  If you've got any tips on having a successful garage sale, let me know!!

Happy Monday from the Central Coast!