National Get Organized Month

I'm not really late - I just didn't report last month about an activity that I had started.

It was January that was actually “National Get Organized Month” which is sponsored by the National Association of Professional Organizers.   I do watch HGTV and I have seen the people who go into homes and help the messy to recover their spaces but I guess I never paid attention to the fact that there is a professional organization for those skilled people!  Right now, I admire their abilities.

The reason I’m interested is that I have started to clear out my mother’s storage area – whew! – what a task!  I started in January with the goal of moving her stuff from a very large unit to a much smaller (and less expensive) unit.  She used to have furniture in there, but that’s gone  so if I could reduce the size and number of the boxes, I could manage it better.

Last month, I selected box after box that was labeled “seasonal” ….. these all held silk flowers, knick-knacks, stuffed animals, etc associated with an event such as Valentine’s Day, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, etc.

My mother is now in an assisted living facility and has limited space to display all of her memorabilia.  The problem is that she has not only accumulated her own stuff over her 85 years, but that she also has stuff from both sets of my grandparents.  I am doing my best to weed out duplicates and ascertain which have sentimental value for her.  Then I’m saving a few for each season/holiday and putting them into separate boxes so I can haul them over to her when it’s the right time.

This is a photo of part of the “unsorted” seasonal stuff, after I had already polished off the huge amount of Christmas stuff and the final sorted stuff after I boxed it up to go back to storage.  Believe me, it’s reduced – took me two days to finish.

That's spring and Easter on the right

And this is the next load that I have in my spare room to sort.  I’m determined to get her into a smaller storage unit by April.  Wish me luck!

I did get my Craftsy BOMs for February finished today.  These were designed to teach people two methods of creating half-square triangles.  I’ve used both methods before so it wasn’t new-to-me and they went quickly.  The third block is because I had some scraps and thought I’d send this “matching” block along with the others to my group’s monthly block lottery.  The one on the left is called a Balkan Puzzle, the one on the right is a Zig-Zag and the third is just a scrappy.

If I turn it sideways, I could call it railroad gates to go
 with the kerchiefs and little trains in the blocks above!