Jolly January 1st....

to you all. We've started out the year with a bang of reorganization. Room changing, furniture moving, vacuuming, dusting, clothes cleaning out and general chaotic havoc that will, by the Lord's grace, turn into order.

We realized yesterday while trying to find something simple, and now I've forgotten what it was, but anyway, the failure to find it caused an ephiphanous moment of, "Enough!" Or something close to it, expressively. For several years Husband and I had personally worked on the 3 box method, 1 year purge rule.

Three box method: Trash, Goodwill, Keep. One year purge rule: If you haven't used it, worn it, or wanted it in one year, purge it.

This system has worked very well for us and our frequent moves in the first decade of our marriage were also helpful for ridding our lives of clutter.

And then the children started their hoarding campaign of all things precious. Purging occurred covertly and sporadically but not nearly efficiently or with any sort of training of the boys. We have been suffering the consequences of our lack of diligence in this. The rooms were being swallowed up by stuff. And the stuff was swallowing up time and energy and order.

Today is the end of that cycle and a step to train the next generation in the 3 and 1 program. Additionally we threw in the room moving, furniture changing aspect to try and develop certain character elements in the boys with one another and individually. I'll have to let you know how that goes.

Meanwhile, Husband is leading the troops and I am working on the waist level clutter that I can reach and pick up without trouble. That and drinking coffee and sneaking chocolate covered peanut brittle.

Progress, order, renewal. All goals for this new year for the sake of relationships, stewardship and rightly applied wisdom.