My decluttering so far this year has mainly consisted of removing the unwanted snow from areas we need to use dail, the driveway, walkways, stairs and deck. In preparation for the warmer weather and deeper, heavier snowfalls expected, last week I used our big gas snow blower to cut trails through the snow to various destinations in the yard, the grandchildren's "tree house", the compost boxes, and out along the side of the house to the front yard and driveway.

Indoors, I went through the pantry cupboard and removed items that were well past their "best before" dates.

I'm planning to have a photo book printed to commemorate our thirty-five years together, this April. I've been working through old photo albums, scanning family group photos and several "memorable occasion" shots from each year. Four years completed, only thirty-one to go.

Because there were some years that prints didn't make it into albums, I revisited my photo print organizing project. Last week, at my church ladies' unfinished projects group, I managed to arrange one shoe box of prints into salvaged envelopes that I'd labeled by year. I'm hoping that I can sort the rest in the coming weeks and put them into albums.

I'm considering how to dispose of extra copies of photos of family members that were never sent to their intended recipients. Doing so would free up quite a bit of space. I'm leaning toward running them through an empty shredder, then disposing of the shredded bits in the rubbish bin as I don't think the coating would be acceptable in the recycling.   

After I had a look at the four years of scans on a bigger monitor, I was very disappointed when I saw that, in spite of using an old towel to wipe both the scanner and the photos, there are many white specks on the images. Removing those will require much time consuming editing. Also I'm afraid they are not a high enough resolution to print well in a book. Not sure if I can find another way to do this project?

Christmas is still very much present in our home. The creche, tree, wreaths and stockings remain in the same places they held on Christmas Eve. The boxes needed to store them in the attic are still beyond my reach in the attic because I injured my "better" knee when I hefted the big snowblower around. Now I cannot climb a ladder to get the storage boxes down, or to carry them back up and stow them away again. Oh well, it does make the living room more colourful and cheerful on these cold dark winter days.

rags