A Remarkable Life in Progress

In her book Unclutter Your Life in One Week, Erin Rooney Doland (of Unclutterer) writes about figuring out what the life you want looks like and how uncluttering can help you move towards what she calls your "remarkable life." A life filled with the things you love and love to do, rather than a life enslaved to your clutter, possessions and job. As I was reading, I followed her instructions to list all the things that make me happy and to focus on these things in order to live my remarkable life.

One of the things I put on my  list was entertaining & socializing. I love people and having people over to my home is something I have always wanted to do, but have not really done much of in the last 5 years, because at 730 sq ft, our house isn't exactly a palatial manor! However, I've decided that instead of trying to wait until I had a bigger home (which isn't going to happen anytime soon), I was just going to start having people over and making what I have work for me.

This weekend was my inaugural start! I had my sister, brother-in-law and niece over for the weekend, and on Saturday night we invited my sister-in-law, her husband and my nephew & niece over as well. Since we had 6 adults and 4 kids in the house, I decided we should have dinner on the patio. Our patio table only seats three, so I brought our dining room table outside. We put the two little boys at the little picnic table we have, 3 adults at each of the tables and the two little girls in high chairs. It actually worked out great and we had a fun night-- until my poor 15 month old niece had a little too much dessert & threw up on her dad, our couch & the living room rug.

I feel very happy that we did this and have committed to having people over more often. If I want to live my remarkable, happiest life, I need to do more than just clean out my closets, I need to start doing the things that make me happy!

In other news, we made it a full month without eating any meals out-- but totally BLEW it this weekend!!! Friday night we had dinner out with my sister & brother-in-law (they paid, so it doesn't TOTALLY count!). Saturday after my bro-in-law and I ran our first 5k, we all went out for breakfast. Sunday, we went out to lunch before sending my sister & bro-in-law on their way, and today I met some friends I hadn't seen in a while for lunch. It is okay, though, we'll get back on the wagon again!

Yesterday, I gave up the plan to try to sell my purged stuff and decided to just donate it. So, we loaded up the truck and dropped off a massive load of stuff at our local Goodwill.

Here is the stuff that went:

Aaaaand here is the nice big open space left after we went to Goodwill!

Woo hoo!!!!