Today while I was taking a rest I was watching Oprah. The episode today was about this lady who had a massive problem of hording. I mean it was unbelievable! This woman was obviously trying to fill a void and was actually creating an even worse problem for her and her family. As a result this lady and her husband were prisoners in their own home. They could barely sleep, let alone walk and 'live' inside their own home. Their kids stopped coming to see them 'cause there just wasn't any place to sit and visit. I'm not quite sure how people actually live this way, but they managed to for over 12 years. They lived in a 3000 sq foot house, 3 car garage filled from floor to ceiling with .....junk. Even the trunk of the car was filled with 'stuff' that had been there for goodness knows how long. She was a shopaholic who had stuff galore.
The good news is that Oprah had a professional team of one hundred people spend two months going through the house making piles of donations, to sell, throw away, and keep. There was 75 TONS, yep that's right, TONS of stuff overall. Fifteen of those HUGE garbage bins each with a 5 ton capacity. Now I'm not wanting to sound in judgement of her or her husband for not intervening, I'm just really glad that they seem to be getting help and can hopefully start to enjoy the second half of their life now with family and friends. In watching this it motivated me to go through my 'stuff', well crap really. We are no where near being that cluttery of a family but I sat my kids down and made them watch about 5 minutes of that show so they could see what not cleaning their room leads to. They were more than enthusiastic about cleaning their rooms (we'll see how long that lasts) I taped the show in any case and just might have to resort to another viewing from time to time.
Tomorrow 3 of the kiddos have the day off of school (the younger 3) and though they are entitled to a day to play and rest and NOT have to do homework, I am for atleast part of the day going to put them to work. We will be going through dressers, closets, cupboards and drawers and purging anything we haven't used for 6-12 months, anything too small or that we simply just don't need. Usually the kids are pretty happy to fill a bag to give to the less fortunate. So, we'll see how that goes. I always tell the kids to start out with cranking the music. It always makes cleaning and sorting way more fun...or just fun period! I heard lil' Emma telling one of her friends that she couldn't play til' her room was clean and then proceeded to guide her in turning some music on first and then cleaning from there. Here's hoping to a fun, productive day tomorrow!
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