Okay, it's probably midnight in the UK now, so I'm starting this one for August.

How many months have some of us been working on this? We can see progress, but we're not finished. I want to be able to entertain this fall and have plenty of room for the holidays, so I'm making a push. What is going to make this possible?

The kids are going on vacation with their father for two weeks.

It's just me and the cats and dogs. Empty boxes, bags and whatever it takes, I'm going to take my vacation days during the same time they're out of town and I'm going to push more of this out of the house one way or another.

This series of threads has been very helpful, and I've been reading books by Don Aslett about de-cluttering that provide some philosophical views of why we save what we do, and all of the avenues this stuff takes to get into our houses.

I can say that I haven't brought in more to replace what has exited, I've been good at passing up the garage sales and the thrift shops, except to drop off donations. I've whittled down the stuff here via documented donations that will be helpful come January at tax time. There has been discipline and thought that goes into the process, but it has always been done on the "second shift," after the work day and the family maintenance activities.

I've spoken about visualizing where I want to be, and Kat has realized that she has to work on more than just her stuff. Liz is working on health issues, and others are moving, retiring, digging out, some have gone missing (Lin in Kansas, did you get buried under JunK's stuff again?). We're coming at this work from a lot of different directions, but it has been fascinating. I love the stories of progress and try not to run on too much myself. So I'll stop now and work on some eBay listings.

Here's hoping August sees us finally finish this work so we have nice roomy houses for the rest of the year. (You might want to save some of those white elephant clutter items for your Secret Santa. That time is just around the corner!) Entertaining, crafts, holidays, kicking back and enjoying your space, here we come!

SRS