Rage cleaning.

Are you a rage cleaner? I didn't realize that was a thing until a few years ago. My therapist told me it's an anxiety overload thing, but also probably some OCD thrown into the mix, too. I realize now that all of my crazy cleaning marathons that I would go on years ago were likely my anxiety taking over because life was hard. Life was busy and I only had two kids then, but I was working full time, so I just never had time to do.... nothing.  

Fast forward to now and while technically I have the time to do nothing, I don't have the opportunity. Most of my days are spent trying to keep up with all four kids, but trying to keep the house relatively clean. I've long since given up my magazine worthy kind of clean for my house, because I don't have the energy levels to do that but also, just vacuuming the one rug exhausts me and I have to lay down for a half hour just so I can then make some toast for myself for lunch. 

God knows I haven't done a deep clean on anything in years. My standards have gone down drastically. 

This last weekend though, I realized the front porch was out of hand. It's the catch all area for toys and kid things, it's basically a play room for them. We never needed a play room before but since we moved, and downsized in space by almost half, we've had to get creative with space and storage. The front porch became the toy room, play room, storage for kid crafts and books, and other. It doesn't take long for things to get out of hand, let's put it that way. So I decided that I was going to spend the time to clean it out and get rid of the things we no longer need. 

I was hoping for help, but this is what my helper opted to do instead. Granted, it was significantly warmer outside than I thought it was going to be, so I know it slowed me way down. Twinky decided he was going to live his best life on the couch while the fan above blew cool air onto him in his indecent position. Jerk. 

It took me hours and I really mean hours to go through every box, every drawer, and every shelf. I went through every single toy piece by piece. Matt ended up hauling out two bags of garbage and a couple of boxes of things to donate. We were able to get all of the kid things onto one side of the porch, so it's not a spread out mess. 

Now we have this whole other side to either leave it empty or do something with. I think the horse (behind my rocking chair) might go soon, I'm not sure. The cats like that cat tree there since they can be the neighborhood watch from there. I'd like to get some kind of lounge chaise or something so I can read out there in the sunshine. Other than that though, I don't have any ideas. I might move some plants out there to see if they do better with more sunlight. I'm trying to get into house plants but so far I've not been real successful. I'm trying, though!