When we were selling our old house, we had clutter. It wasn't the sort that you'd likely notice if you visited. It was the normal, mostly manageable a-family-of-5-live-here type of clutter. However, houses show much better if the surfaces are relatively free from stuff (this means sticking your toaster and blender away, stuff like that, and your paperwork, and whatnot). It makes the space look better. We decided we'd just pack the non-essentials that cluttered up the joint, early in anticipation of eventually moving, and it was amazing how much better the house looked, and how much easier it was to keep it clean, without so much stuff.

We're a family of pack-rats by nature, but fortunately, Scott (who is the master clutterer--you can track him thanks to the clutter he leaves in his wake) and I both have a ruthless streak, when we finally get around to tossing out stuff. So a lot of what we intended to store, we decided to toss, which is why I recommended trash bags, as well as the bins. Once you get moving, you might find you're happier without all the stuff. If not, you can store it, and find a proper place for it, after the cleaning is done.

Also, if you can get the kids out of the house, it never hurts to ditch old toys they don't even care about any more (at least until they know you're going to ditch them).

We're lucky. Christopher HATES stuff. In general. Anything non-essential, he'd rather not have out. Me, I don't collect. I'm strictly into usable things. So the worst clutter we have is magazines and books.

But even that is kept minimal. Our biggest issue in the future will be the large number of tiny, brightly colored caltrops toys around but I suspect this is part of having a kid.

I just checked my library fines online. It's only $6.60. If we go this morning, we can hit the coffee joint directly across the street from the library. Mmmm...latte. And BOOKS!

One of the things about moving every two years, with a weight limit, is it does limit the STUFF. I was stunned at how much junk we'd accumulated while in Fairfax for a triple tour.

Of course, my stepmom sending a full-size moving truck of all my parents' stuff after my dad died didn't help.

On another topic, does anyone know a good English -> Latin translator that will do whole phrases?

Who is collecting the stuff for -t?

Who is collecting the stuff for -t?

I would be happy to, since she will be out here, if that works for people.

JS! Why does your clan-sect-group-thing have a Cymru (Welsh) dragon on your tabards?

The red background with the white animal? That's a heraldic wolf, which is the totem animal for our kingdom, Ealdormere (the province of Ontario in the regular world). Those particular tabards are designated for our unbelted champions fighting team. Unbelts is SCA parlance for fighters who aren't knights.

Our parent kingdom, the Midrealm, or Middle kingdom (MI, OH, KY, IN, IL) has a welsh dragon as heraldic animal. It was originally a chinese dragon because China is also known as the Middle kingdom, but someone a long time back figured the welsh dragon looked cooler, so that's what they use. (You may see that in some of the pictures, their tabards are white with a red stripe with the green dragon in the middle).

Count me in on the care package for -t! and I've got some amethysts lying around waiting to be made into something ...

Perkins, insent to your profile addy.

I'm just going to assume it's okay with people for me to be point person. I need to run to work now, but I should have time today to get organized about it, so I will post more later.

A Perkins Point Person sounds good to me!

Heather, I think a shower for your family members would be faboo. Let me know where they register because I'd like to send them something too.

Ooh! The Christmas after my family's thing we had an ornament party just before it came time to decorate the tree. It was simple -- just cider and cookies and carols and shiny little packages. My friend Dotty thought it up, she figured, sure people would give us ornaments ON Christmas but that would be a bit too late. It was such a wonderful day.

I'm just going to assume it's okay with people for me to be point person.

::points emphatically at Perkins::