Mental Health Clean-up Monday

So today was a pretty good day of organizing my pictures. For years and years I've been toting around a large laundry basket full of pictures. Hundreds of pictures in my dresser drawers taking up space. Old, OLD photo albums that were half stuffed with pictures and old pictures that have been water damaged. I had my sons baby book from 1997 and it was so old and had been damaged by water years ago, so I know there also had to be some mold laying around on those old albums and books.

And this is the story of my madness and how my brain works......

My husband texted me this morning and he said, "Hey can you send me a copy of our marriage license?" He needed it for something to be updated in the old system at his work for our insurance. So I said, "Sure, give me a moment". I head into the bedroom and walk into our larger closet. And as I stand there, I look up at all the boxes and torn file bags that are holding thousands of pictures and documents. Honestly I wanted to cry and I even said in my head, "Good Luck Girl!" hahaha. "No Joke".

He texted me at 7:51 am. I was very surprised to have found the marriage license in an envelope that said, "Marriage License" written on the front! It only took me about 4 minutes to find it. But then the madness set in. I started pulling down boxes and files and anything to do with mine that I knew was old. Now keep in mind, these were only my pictures from the past 43 years before I even married my husband. So thankfully I worked on his pictures a long time ago and filed them all nice and neat for him. So my bed is like a HUGE anthill of files, pictures and photo albums now.

And it was at this moment that I put my hands on my hips, looked at my bed and said to myself, "Girl, I don't think you got this!" And then my granddaughter Sophia walked into my bedroom and said to me, "Nana Chelle this is crazy!" Note that my granddaughter is three years old. See, she even knows my madness.

So I thought for a minute and said to myself, "You've already started, you have to finish this now. God never gave up on you, so don't give up on organizing your home like it should be." 

So right now you're probably thinking, "Wow she talks to herself a lot!" Just shush it! Yes I do, and am proud of it. LOL

I started gathering all of my pictures and old documents and moldy old photo albums and started dragging everything into my living room floor so I could start going through everything. I started with my old documents. At this point I'm wondering why I'd never been put on the show "Hoarders" for saving old documents from 1992 all the way back from the year I graduated high school. I had every one of my report cards even from grade school. But you know, we live in such a different world now where everything is digital.  If I remember correctly I was saving all of these things for my kids when they become adults and for my grandchildren to look at one day. Shoot, young adult children and even our grandchildren don't even care to look at that stuff anymore. So I threw everything from my school days away. 

After the mess with hoarding all of my school documents and report cards I started in on my old legal documents. O geez, you don't even want to know what all I was saving. I guess I was going to really need that receipt from Ventures on the mall from 1997 In case those jeans didn't fit me anymore. And I really didn't need to keep that grocery receipt from Consumers from 1989 because I had a coupon I might have been able to use this year that was on the bottom of my receipt. I had the DUMBEST things saved in those files. So, after going through all of my papers I had a HUGE box of trash and only 2 documents that I kept and put back up in the closet in a tiny shoe box to keep haha.

By this time it's already 10:30 am, so I have a bit more time to mess with things before I cook Sophia's lunch. She had already eaten a big can of peaches and some macaroni for breakfast. Hey, don't judge. She gets what she asks for at Nana's house. 

So I began going through all of my pictures and went down  memory lane. It was so nice to see so many pictures of my adult children when they were just little babies in the hospital and growing up through the years. The first thing I did, was organize my pictures into 4 piles. One pile for my daughter Jessica who is 29. One pile for my son Nathanial who is 28. One pile of damaged pictures to clean up and laminate. And another pile of pictures for me to keep. I probably spent around 2 hours laminating pictures making them look really pretty again. Then I took my son's baby book and tore the pages out. I took our hospital bands that we wore together on May 20, 1997, and I took his baby hair from his first hair cut and I took his little baby bed Name Tag and I put them all neatly on a paper and laminated them for him. They will always be safe now and he will be able to show his kids one day. I had a lot of laminating things honestly.

Then I took two large file folders that I got from the "One Dollar and Twenty Five Cent Tree Store" and I rearranged Jessica's and Nathan's pictures into their folders to give to them. I was very proud of myself for all of the organizing I had done up to this point but I was honestly kind of mentally exhausted. BUT I had to keep going. I took a quick break though and made Sophia lunch, sat down for a sec and drank a cup of coffee and then started back in my pile. The photo albums that were just real stinky from being so so old and even maybe got wet here and there from moving a million times back in the day, I just started yanking all of the pictures from them and I threw all of the old albums away. O yeah, I almost forgot to mention that I had also found some old newspaper clippings that I had been saving, so I cut out those articles and also laminated those for safe keeping for my kids. But anyway, so I threw away all the old stinky albums and organized all my new, clean, non-no more smelling photos. 

I am so proud of myself for doing this and this was my first big cleaning project inside my house this spring. Tomorrow I will pick another task. And every day I will do another task until my whole house is organized. 

So, my point to this blog today is that organizing your things is very GOOD for your mental health. And  not only your mental health, but like I said before, there was some mold on those old albums! That is all out of my closets now!

So pick a room, start small, don't overwhelm yourself, and get to organizing. If I can do it, you can do it!

Below I will show you a picture of the laundry basket of crud I threw away that was just holding pictures and documents that were NOT organized and then I will show you two pictures of the files I made for my adult children and how I organized MY photos to keep!