By Executive Director, Brooks Paternotte
For many of us the arrival of spring means getting outside and back in the garden – something I enjoyed immensely this past weekend. Yet the change of seasons also is a great opportunity for some spring cleaning inside of the home. If those April showers force you indoors, try tackling the basement, attic, or garage, and that’s exactly what we did here at Irvine on Monday.
Over the course of the year we accumulate a lot of items that we may see a use for or hate to throw away, particularly those of us who have pack rat tendencies. We coached ourselves to set aside things we had not used for the last few years. Once we had done that, we were able to divide what we had purged into three piles: items to reuse or donate, items to recycle, and items to take to the dump. Naturally, we want to maximize the first two and minimize the last!
After a few hours and some difficult partings, we had not only removed much of the clutter from our storage areas but also managed to free up some space. Tackling such a task collectively helped to bring us together as a team and improved communications.