Cleaning Out

Last weekend I was upstairs vacuuming the bedrooms when I become disgusted with amount of stuff that was cluttering the kid's rooms. I warned them that when we started summer vacation it was going to be time to go through their rooms and get rid of all the things that they don't play with anymore. I met with resistance, of course, but I stood my ground. Today, vacation day one, I kept my word. I started with Alexa and then moved on to Chloe. We went through every basket, toy box, shelf, and bin in their rooms. They examined every toy. In the end each girl had an entire trash bag plus one full recycle bin of things that were broken, torn, or just plain useless and could be thrown out. More inspiring was this...

all of these are bags of stuffed animals, dolls, and dinosaurs that we are giving away. I am so excited I can't wait for a nice sunny day to just set them out front and watch them disappear. I have absolutely no interest or patience for a yard sale. I much prefer the free sign out front and the rapid removal. Inspired by how neat and clean their rooms were they moved on to cleaning out the art box. They decided to melt down all the broken crayons in a muffin tin to create new colors. They were pretty creative and focused.

They couldn't wait for them to cool off and see what they would look like.
I do think I need a new muffin tin though, but it is a small price to pay for less "stuff" in my house. I warned them that we aren't done I am moving on to the downstairs next.