On my little bookshelf...

The purging bug has hit me, FULL FORCE. I have learned that as a mom and homeschooler that the more tidy and orderly my environment is, the better I can steward my time and my attitude in general is much better. I don't get distracted by chaos or upset that I don't have time to fix it. Achieving order usually begins with one thing, cutting back and getting rid of what is no longer useful.

Thankfully, the purging bug hit while it was still summer. The kids are doing some school right now, but it is mostly things they can do on their own, thank you Teaching Textbooks and DuoLingo.

Right now, if you texted and asked how it was going, I would send you a photo of the bookshelf I am almost halfway finished with:

If you asked to come over and see it in person, you would discover that much chaos goes into creating order:

Not only that, you'd see my growing piles of items to give away:

This will not be a quickly completed project. I am not trying to just tidy up and hope we can keep it clean. I am trying to clear out those things which are preventing us from living free from the burden of excess. We are still homeschoolers, so we will likely still possess more books than the children's section of my local library branch. But we've learned over many efforts, that we aren't huge fans of studying every detail of the Ancient World and besides Knights and Castles, we're pretty happy to skip Medieval Times and spend more of our efforts on the history of the last 300 or so years than the last 3,000. So, while I'm keeping some history books which give us an adequately broad historical perspective, I am giving away/selling/donating some of the more specific, super in-depth ones. (Please let me know if there is anything you are looking for, I might be getting rid of it!)

I do hope to have made some pretty good headway by the time we officially kick off "full school" after Labor Day. I look forward to taking a deep breath of satisfaction after dusting the last shelf, and organizing the last book. Until then, if you want to come for coffee or swimming, please still come, just step carefully around the piles.