Okay first I spent ALOT of money yesterday.

I purchased:
A blower/Vac for the yard 97.00
A large bag of Fertilizer with Crabgrass preventer 53.94
Garlic Bread $1.34 (reduced to quick sale)
Giant Pet Lint Roller 4.98

Total Spent $166.62

I tried to borrow a blower BUT no one I know has one, and since I still have a 7 foot high snow bank on half my boulivard I will need it more than once. Anyway it is one of those things I need every spring so it was time to just suck it up and buy it.

The Fertilizer is a need, it has to have crab grass preventer in it because that is my BIG yard issue. I also sprang for the Scotts brand because it is not suppose to burn the grass, and it is suppose to be timed release. BUT truthfully the main reason in addition to the above reasons, I spent a little more on the scotts over the generic was because the Scotts is suppose to be pet/child safe as soon as the dust settles where as the others NOT SO MUCH.

****
The declutter plan, I cleared a bunch of things out of my garage and put them on the sidewalk for spring cleanup week on friday. Wonder how much of it will be gone by the time I get home tonight? Anyway it took up alot of room in my garage. It was stuff I was going to put in my garage sale for super cheap. I just wanted a little money, but I decided not to have a yard sale.

It is amazing how mentally tough it is to see clutter and hold onto clutter in the hopes to make a few bucks. Yes I might have made a few bucks at a rummage sale, but with all the things that are out of my control in my life right now, I want the control of discarding those things and getting my garage to a point where I can start organizing it.

I want to have a yard sale but I just am not going to have the time (My days are pretty busy with extra training to prep for the deployment) Plus I want to spend time with my son, not spend time preping for a sale and hosting a sale, and I really want to start on the process of getting my garage user friendly. It was so functional until I moved that stuff into the garage so it was out of the way until the garage sale. But it seems like when I have a garage sale the garage and house gets MORE messy before it gets cleaner because I am moving stuff around to make shopping easier and in my case I am moving all flat surfaces (desks, end tables, coffee table, etc) to the garage to put stuff on because I don't have enough tables.

The stuff I put onto the curb was not good enough for the thrift store to be willing to pick up, and I am not going to store it in my garage for weeks in the hope someone sees the $5 ad and wants it. There are still three items in the garage, two items I will post online, the third I will be adding to the pile outside. I always put the stuff outside a few days before spring cleanup because once I do that it frees up space in my mind (mental to do list) and I start to remember other things that can go.

Anyway.....I have a plan. Starting Yesterday Everyday I want to declutter atleast one item. I have approx 160 days left until I deploy so that is 160 items I would declutter out of my house before I leave.

I will count items I throw away, and I will count things I donate. The things I throw away I get credit right away for, the things I donate I only get credit for them when they are recorded onto my donation spread sheet and placed neatly in a box to go to the drop off point. I will donate the stuff IF I have it recorded on the excell sheet. The big push is to get it on the excell sheet. Usually once I get about 3 or 4 boxes of stuff onto the spreadsheet I get in a hurry to donate it to clear the space.

If I am taking stuff to resale I do not get credit for it until I actually take it into the store. The reason for this is because I tend to sometimes put those things in my car and then it takes me a few days to actually take the things in.

I also have another thing, I have things at my home that are going to deploy with me, such as sheets etc. If it is a deployment item I get credit for getting it out of my house IF it is an item that is going into my tough box. And then I only get credit for it once it is in neatly packed into the tough box.

Yesterday I took some items into my favorite childrens resale shop. I made $10 then realized that they are still taking out of season stuff and so I took another bag of items in and got another $17. So Yesterday was a big day of decluttering.