Five on Friday ... Random

Good Morning!

I'm linking up at long last with Amy of Love Made My Home and her world famous Five on Friday!

I haven't joined up in a while. With all the decluttering I've been doing blog posts have been minimal as of late, although I'm trying hard to visit everyone who has stopped by. Which brings me to my first "five".

One: No-Reply Bloggers

I'm getting more and more comments from "no-reply bloggers" these days. I had been replying through my email to all of you, and there has been no error message in my email account that my messages have not been delivered. But do you no-reply bloggers receive my reply to your comments? It's been a question I've been meaning to ask for awhile. I assume you know if you are no-reply or not. But if I'm sending out all these replies to comments and they are not being received, I'd like to know if this is a complete waste of time for me. I have been trying to visit everyone who leaves a comment too, but some days I just get bogged down with other stuff. Anyway, since January I have not been replying to no-reply comments, but I don't want to offend anyone by ignoring the comments all the time. I don't reply to comments directly on my blog, I find it more convenient to reply through email.

Two: A Valentine Craft

Had my little peeps work away at this yesterday morning. An easy craft with minimal assistance that I always liked. We cut a heart shape from plastic canvas, tied a string (or yarn) onto a plastic needle, and they thread on pony beads, foam shapes and whatever you have that you can poke a hole into. I still have the one my son made many moons ago!

Three: Cody

Someone asked recently about Cody, and yes, he is still here ... underfoot ... which has actually become his new nickname. With my decluttering, there are always piles of stuff just outside the kitchen door where he likes to lie down and keep an eye on everything. Now he's taking up the last of the little space that you need to walk out of the kitchen, or down the hall, or out to the front door. It's a very central location, and he's constantly underfoot! He's got the boot more than once, and I think he's feeling a bit neglected and unappreciated. Last night I let him hop up on the bed while I sorted through more papers. He can settle into a cozy spot in a matter of seconds.

Four: Sunup

The sun hadn't quite risen yet when I came out to the kitchen this morning. Now it's blinding me as I sit at the kitchen table typing this! I love that the sun comes in through my kitchen all morning, and then into the living room on the front of my house in the afternoon.

Making time for tea ;)

Five: Decluttering

I've been making great progress with the decluttering. There have been two full van-loads of stuff gone to the thrift store.

First load ... full front to back!

Second load ... thumbs up from my husband ;)

There have been more garbage bags at our curb (I'm glad we still are allowed four bags of "residual" garbage ... friends of ours are allowed only one). The blue paper recycling box has been heaped the past two weeks as I work through the "important papers" category. And there's a lot of papers to be burned as well. I hate this papers category. It's very tedious. I worked through loose photographs from my parents' house last week too ... depressing and tedious! The photos need to be dealt with again, but at a later date ... like at the very end of this task! I've added more information to my page on my sidebar on decluttering if you're interested. Thanks again to all of you for your continued support and rallying me along on this. I'm slowly starting to feel a huge weight lift from my shoulders ,and my husband almost, but not quite, has a skip in his step at the amount of things leaving the house! These totes that I'm showing (how exciting!) are empty. All of them used to be chuck full! See? Progress! All the stuff that I had/have has always been very organized, and my husband used to call me the Tote Queen.

It's been very surprising to me too that a lot of people have told me that I have inspired them to also declutter their homes this year. Wow! I don't think I've inspired anyone to do anything before, so this was such a nice compliment. I wish everyone who has begun this job the best of luck. If you want any help in this, I would love to help out if I can ... just send me a note (email is on my sidebar).

big totes

little totes

And that's my five for this week!
Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend everyone!

Wendy :)