Oh, and Clutter? You Be Gone, Too.

Matt started hitting me with facts from the Unclutterer web site this afternoon. You know, things like "American homes are 80% bigger now than they were in 1970 and yet there is a storage crisis - no one has room for their belongings." Egads!

I cannot tell you how very much facts like these make my ass twitch. It's hard to get me too tweaked out about things, but the extreme excesses of this nation of ours really gets me going. It is everywhere: our houses, the size of our cars, the number of cars we feel we need, the TV watching, the number of TVs in our homes, the clothing and shoes in our closets, the food we consume, the size of an entree in restaurants, and the amount of stuff we need to have around us. You know, just to name the first few that come to mind.

Matt and I have shocked more than a few people when we told them that we didn't put a bid on another home because it was just too big. It was on our very block, a few houses closer to the lake even, and gorgeous. I mean, absolutely beautiful arts and craft details that were perfectly preserved. It was slightly more expensive than ours, but still within our range. And we both walked out of there, and said wistfully, "It's too bad - it's just too big for us." The condo we bought feels palatial to us; we never did find out how many square feet exactly, but somewhere between 2,000 and 2500. Plenty big; certainly big enough to have too much clutter already.

So when Matt started rattling off these facts today and said that he was ready to make a concerted effort to declutter the house, I was on fire. Within seconds - no joke - we had emptied out a boxful of dishes and glasses from among our everyday things in the kitchen cupboards, right where we were standing, bound for donation.

The four of us were playing down in the playroom a little while later, and I was drawn by a strong magnetic force to the two large storage rooms adjacent to that area. Before anyone realized what was going on - myself included - I had started pulling everything out of both closets: reorganizing, unpacking boxes we hadn't opened since the move, and chucking crap left and right. I was trapped back there for the better part of an hour, handing large boxes of give-aways to Matt over towering stacks of bins and boxes. Those closets have a whole lot more space in them than they used to.

We now have 8 large cardboard boxes stacked up in our kitchen to give away.

And, people, that is only the beginning.