slowly but surely...

Well, we still have TONS of boxes to unpack and put away - but we are slowly but surely getting there. I had volunteered to babysit for a friend (who was hiking Mt Fuji) all day saturday - which actually turned out to work out great. It gave us a place to go with the kids so Patrick could start getting organized. We tried to tackle the kitchen first so that is almost done. We have tons of storage in the kitchen so it was easy to put things away. We are still rearranging the cabinets and pantry to try to make it as user friendly as possible. It is nice to have options!!! We also realized we have a lot of crap we just don't need. So we have a few boxes to donate to the 'airman's attic'. And a lot of it is good stuff. Our everyday dishes from Martha Stewart - they are in great shape - but you can't microwave them, so I had gotten some plain white Pottery barn plates that work great. No need for 2 sets of plates, so we will donate them. I feel good about donating here because there are a lot of people who really need things. We are also donating our rocker/ottoman (which I LOVE) but we have no room for. But I see these pregnant women whose husbands are being deployed and they have little to no extra money, so I feel good about giving it away. Needless to say, we are on a major purging spree and it feels good to get rid of things.

Before we left Ohio, I found an awesome outdoor storage shed from Rubbermaid. It was discontinued - so it ended up being on clearance for more than 50% off. I found the ONE Home Depot in the area that still had one and bought it. I am so glad we did, because it has given us a ton of outdoor storage space that we wouldn't have otherwise. But because of the humidity, we have to be careful of what we put in there. But it is great for our bikes, lawn mower, christmas decorations, tools, etc.

I am going to have to go through the kids toys again to decide what we really want to keep. Fortunately, their rooms are much larger than in Ohio, so we can keep most of their toys in their own rooms. And we had storage systems before - so it works out well.

We also get 20 free hours of babysitting (I have used 7) so I am taking the kids for 3 hours each day for the next few days so I can get some uninterrupted unpacking/organizing time. Hopefully I can make some more progress! Wish me luck :-)