What I learned from my Simplify Challenge

I'm back from jury duty as I lucked out and only had to serve 2 days. I was selected for a jury but then the defendant changed the plea to guilty so we were through before we started.

Thinking about the simplify challenge I followed caused me to identify some things that I learned.

- My Hubby doesn't see a need to declutter more until we actually are getting ready to put the house on the market. I want to do it slowly; he wants to do it as a marathon. More discussion needed. That being said I am talking about hidden clutter not a messy house.

- Paperwork retention is a challenge even in this paperless world.  We have stacks of paper from when we started our retirement plans in pre-online record days. Contracts and such. We also have stacks of paper from the sale of our two previous homes. I need to find out what we actually need to keep and then scan what I can.

- We really need to socialize as a couple more. We are going to try a hiking group that a friend has created and start inviting people out to dinner with us once a month.

- I hate to clean floors. This was not exactly a learning but how much I hate washing floors really became apparent LOL.

- We need to buy a new shop vac that uses a filter. Ours came with the house and doesn't have a bag or filter available.

We did manage to send 39 items out the door which is a great monthly total for us. The basement looks much better and some suitcases have a new home in cleared out storage space instead of behind a piece of furniture.

I am motivated to keep going with fall cleaning and to finish cleaning the basement floor. We are currently looking to hire more help in the yard although it has been hard to find people who will do what we need. We are also considering whether or not to sell this house and move into a rental for the time remaining until Hubby retires (5+ years) as we are both very tired of upkeep. Hard decisions ahead.

The rest of this week though is devoted mostly to preparing for the Friends of the Library big fall book sale. We are hoping that it won't rain!