Cleaning out the Downstairs Bedroom

Today was a busy day for us, beginning with heading over to church in the morning to help "un-decorate" the sanctuary. This was our plan for a service activity for the whole family to do together in January. The kids had a lot of fun taking down the Chrismons (ornaments) and wrapping them up. 

Another highlight was getting to go up into the church attic, which was way cool (it is the top of the old sanctuary). And eating donuts that some kind soul brought for everyone.

After our morning adventure, we faced a very daunting project on our list - beginning to tackle the downstairs bedroom. Yikes! I think it has actually gotten worse during the clean up of the house. Here are some "before" views.

The bed is now covered with drawers from an old chest that we hauled downstairs from our bedroom. All of the surrounding boxes are from Will's childhood.

The chest and more childhood memorabilia of Will's.

Looking into the closet. We never iron, but if we did, the ironing board is ready to go!

The computer desk with computer equipment and other items. I am doubting whether we have turned on our desktop computer since we moved here.

The computer after we cleared off the other stuff. We posted the desk as a "free" offer on Craiglist hoping that someone would take it off our hands, and BAM! Someone is coming to pick it up tomorrow, and if that doesn't work, we have a whole slew of people as backups.

The most daunting task of tackling this room was going through all of Will's childhood memories. And OH, the memories! These weren't even my own memories and it still physically hurt me to go through the boxes and look at all of the memorabilia of life and decide what to do with it (keep or pitch). I know it is pretty rough for Will but he is trying to not think about it too deeply. Here is a page from one of his drawings from kindergarten of what he wanted for Christmas (we decided to keep the collection in the end after I took a picture of every page).

The Donald Duck decorations that hung in Will's room starting when he was 1 year old. (These did not make the cut because we have no use for them....trying not to think hard. :) )

Will going through one of the many boxes.

And some of the stuff in there was from our early married life. Here is the receipt from the hotel the first night of our honeymoon. (We were going all fancy with the Howard Johnson). It did not make the cut but it is forever captured in this image.

A picture from our wedding.

Will discovered his awesome "Willie Jammin'" shirt from the 1980s.

We took a break later in the afternoon from working on the bedroom to attend the K-State women's basketball game, where it was dollar day: dollar tickets, dollar refreshments = win-win. And what better way to attend than decked out in our Bergman Elementary spirit wear?? (Thankfully, the purple colors worked well.)

At the game, cheering on the Cats!

We worked on the bedroom more after the game and then after dinner, headed over to Julie and Charlie's house for GAME NIGHT! It was an awesome night of laughter, RumChata, Taboo and other word games, and wine. Oh, and M&Ms. Pounds of M&Ms.

Hopefully we can make more progress on the bedroom tomorrow and start to get it into some semblance of order!