Tackling the Beast...

Below is a photo of the big upstairs room when we bought the house

It became my storage space to put all the boxes of crap I've been hauling around since college and before.  Every time I needed something I opened up boxes and strew the contents around. I never quite got around to sorting through and throwing out things. 

This Fall we decided to tackle the upstairs windows, which was going well until it got too cold to work on them outside.  Then I decided to work on them in the nook while that room was being remodeled.  Now that the nook is finally becoming our office, I decided to make space to work on the windows upstairs.  

Well... that forced me to tackle the BEAST.  All the stuff, clutter, papers, misc. crap.  In the spirit of Change We Can Believe In, I decided this was Our Time to make Big Progress, Big Change. 

The below pic is midway in the process.  I wish a had taken a pic of the real state of the space before I had started.   Initially I was going to just condense things down a bit to make a window work space.  That turned into a weeklong effort to condense everything down to totally clear the room out, so we could paint it.  That involved condensing all the stuff stored in the other upstairs room too.  One thing always leads to another.

Mid-way through condensing.  ARGH! 

The small upstairs room post-condensing.

I discovered my childhood pencil collection in the belly of beast.  

I admit that I couldn't quite force myself to throw all of them away.  But I tossed the box.

My childhood eraser collection- now lives in a landfill.  Why did I move these things around all these years?

Going through the de-cluttering process was just like on those TV shows.  I had to keep telling myself it was okay to just let go.  Put the crap in a bag and don't look back.  

I managed to take about 10 large bags of things to goodwill, recycle many cardboards boxes and several bags full of paper, and throw away several big bags of garbage.  There's still more to get rid of, but I made a great start.  It only took me three years to get in the mood to tackle this project.

Terry starts demo while I finish clearing the room.

Terry tearing out the shelves while trying not to hit his head on the ceiling.

Terry installing our newly refinished windows.

New paint!  A few more days and we'll be done!!!  Life is Good!