WORSE before it gets better

Ya'know the old saying, "It will get worse before it gets better"? Well our house definitely looks worse than it did a week ago! It is a disaster area! I host a Bible study at my house every other week and they are going to have to have some grace tonight when they arrive. We might have enough places to sit for study but the area isn't going to look nice! The reason that it is so crazy is that we are painting and things are being moved around to accomodate. However, there is a lot of stuff that has been pulled out of corners that we put them in temporarily *a year ago* too. Going through it now to figure out where the stuff should go isn't easy for me!

My problem is that I'm a moderate packrat (that might be putting it too lightly). I like to hold on to things. I always hold on to things not for a specific purpose but with the thought, "This might come in handy one day." And now I have to pay the price and get rid of at least half of the stuff that "might have come in handy" because it is cluttering my house! Maybe I need to come up with some rules for myself on keeping things. So, what might these rules be to keep a random "something"...

1. Must have a specific use
2. Must be used within a year (is this reasonable? does this mean that I need to date it?)
3. If not used, must leave the house!
4. If kept for sentimental reasons, must fit inside assigned tote (1-2 totes for sentimentals?)

So, hopefully my self-imposed rules will help as I go through the plethora of boxes that need to be sorted sitting around the house.

As I said in my last post, we worked on painting the grand canyon wall this past weekend. It didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped. Moving the piano, though heavy, and taking the mural posters off the wall went well. The grand canyon just peeled off the wall and the adhesive was thick but after about 6 or 7 applications of adhesive remover, it came off the wall rather nicely as well. It still left some places that needed to be patched, though, and this is where our problems started. Something about the wall in those places didn't like the putty or the primer we are using. We don't know if it is something about the paint that was under the mural or what, but it bubbled up real bad! So Ben scraped those areas back off and started again. It looks like what he did this time is going to work, but it has added a lot of time on to our "painting the grand canyon wall" timeline. I think he will be able to finish it tomorrow night though! Yea! Then we will be one more wall closer to our goal of getting the first floor painted!