I’m not sure what’s up with me, but I’m on a tear lately.

Two weekends ago, I spent an entire Saturday massively purging my closet. By the end of the day, I sent four bags of clothes to Goodwill and threw away another two (someone remind me why I hold on to clothes with stains please?) and my closet was completely organized and sorted into sections (T’s, dress shirts, work pants, etc) for the first time in probably 7 years.

After Monday’s hot water heater fiasco, we realized our garage needed a serious cleaning. Yesterday, DadJovi and I spent four hours sweltering, cleaning and sorting. Again, we have not done a major cleaning like that in years. I even went through boxes full of papers and random crap. I did find some treasures — letters to DadJovi from his late mother, written when he was a little boy, and a letter from my late great-grandmother to my mom when she was still in the hospital after having me. It was such an amazing family artifact. I forget that I even had it.

Plus, I found two complete sets of our wedding dishes still packed up in the Crate and Barrel boxes! Happy anniversary to us!

By the end of the day, we took a carload full of stuff to Goodwill again, including two strollers. We’re now down to just the Maclaren umbrella stroller. Wow, where did the past 3 years go?

There are still some boxes to be sorted (including some tax returns from the early ’00s. Yikes!) but we made some serious progress.

Today, I tackled the inside of the house. For almost 8 years, two boxes have been sitting in the top of our guest room closet. DadJovi stashed them there after we moved in and has avoided them for all these years. We both have a bad habit of trying to ignore upsetting things. During the move, the movers dropped these boxes and they contained one of husband’s most treasured possessions — his grandparents’ china. After the movers had already left, we were moving the boxes when we heard the unmistakeable clinks of glass shards. To be honest, I can’t remember why we never followed up with the movers, but I think it’s because our house was under construction for so many months that by the time we went to unpack them, it’d been so long.

Anyway, I decided to confront the boxes today and either get rid of the broken dishes or get them out and ready to use. At first, I thought it was going to be a lost cause. The first 7 plates I pulled out — all saucers — were broken into many, many pieces. But then I started finding some undamaged pieces, and by the time I got it all out of the boxes I had exciting news — only the saucers were broken! We still have 12 placesettings of dinner plates, salad bowls, small plates, tea cups, serving platters, a gorgeous gravy boat (such a throwback!) and a beautiful sugar bowl and creamer set.

I think we need to throw a big dinner party!

Now, I just needed to figure out where to put them. Of course, that meant I had to move things from one place, empty another cabinet, etc. At one point, this was my kitchen:

I found some random ass crap. Um, a s’mores platter from Cosi circa 2001? Yeah, if I’ve never used it by now, it’s never getting used. And since I had Grandma’s china, it was time to get rid of the set of china I got when our next door neighbor died. A girl can only have so many sets of china.

Back to Goodwill with three more boxes!

After lots of reorganizing, I finally found a place for all the china at the top of our pantry:

I’m still not sure that’s the ideal way to store old, delicate dishes. Any advice? Now, I just have to do something about the rest of the pantry.

But that will have to wait for another time. But I did clean out our overstuffed linen closet and I even bought a shoe rack for E’s closet that nearly tested the limits of my patience today (yeah right no tools required, cheap piece of crap).

Phew! I’m exhausted just thinking about all the cleaning but it’s another reason I’m so thankful for having a cleaning lady now. Instead of mopping the floors and cleaning the bathrooms today, I got to get clean out my closets and it was such a liberating feeling!

What’s the last project you tackled? How do you stay organized because I need some serious help!