More minimizing: Jewelry and dresser tops

Monday was a glorious holiday for our home with the unique combo of our work being closed, but the kids' daycare still open. We enjoyed getting a lot of chores done around the house, uninterrupted, and having conversations with each other, uninterrupted, about life things that are kind of important like our budget and impending job searches. (Perhaps more on those topics at a later time). I wanted to share the progress I've made on my minimizing journey after Monday.

Earrings

AFTER

BEFORE

My goal was to see the jewelry I had more clearly and eliminate the pieces that I know I absolutely have not worn since moving to Virginia 3.5 years ago. So this was not an extreme purge, but I did toss out dollar store earrings I never wear anymore or singles that the matching pair has not revealed itself in years. I've gathered these into a plastic box with dividers (for sewing thread) that I also have not used. So they are able to be passed on for the next lucky attender of our community free sales. (The singles I threw away)

Necklaces
After removing the necklaces I have not worn in years, I recalled Heath enjoying quite a few of them when I let him play dress up. So I selected five that are durable and would be safe for his classroom to donate to their dress up box so 20 kids have daily access to get more use out of them than I have.

BEFORE

AFTER

Dresser Tops
In reading a lot of encouragement from minimalists, I have found a running theme to start with yourself/the areas that you have control over, before making over the shared living room space for example. Another theme has been to have a 'trial period' to test drive before purging something completely. So with those ideas in mind, the other needed step for me Monday was to clear off the tops of our two dressers in our bedroom.

The dresser tops are a constant battleground for accumulating more piles of things, sometimes clothing, sometimes random stuff that could be designated to a 'junk drawer' but instead lives on top of our dressers. So I began with cleaning up all the items that needed a home (some of which moved to the garbage) and then asked J if he would be willing to give our two decoration pieces a trial run of being out of sight. He agreed, so I boxed up two candle centerpieces that we have owned since getting married and placed the box out of our way in the guest room. I said we'd leave it out for 2 weeks before re-assessing, but the space and freedom of not having things in our room for only a day is so glorious I don't know that we will go back. Right now the only decor in our room are personal photos.

I feel like dancing in these open spaces now- our room feels huge!