As many of you know, something I always do is reply to each comment left on my blog with an e-mail. I take pride in doing this. If you took the time to leave me a comment, which I adore, I want to acknowledge it.

Over the last week, I have been slacking in this area. NHL has been home from school all week thanks to winter break, but there is more going on. The days and nights have been a blur as we prepare for the arrival of the new refrigerator. To say that we finally took charge of the chaos within the house would be an understatement. This new refrigerator has been a blessing in disguise. Our curb on garbage night will certainly show how nicely we were able to purge "stuff" from our house. At last count, we had well over a dozen bags of garbage and the recycling is overflowing on our front porch.

Here was our attack method:

• Saturday – JL and I went right for the kitchen. We went through the area that we store kids medicine in and checked dates on everything. Then we cleared off the top/side are of the refrigerator and by the back door. Next up were the counters. I was feeling ambitious and opted to start going through the cabinets to clean things out. I figured Passover is coming, so this will save us time later on. After three hours we, finished up to get dinner ready and put the kids to bed.

• Sunday – JL took the kids out for a little while. I went into the extra room, known as the "third bedroom." Prior to leaving, JL brought up boxes from the basement of clothing for me to shuffle outgrown NHL clothing into. When I was done the 24M/2T things were up and ready for JSL, and the 3T/4T/5T things were put away from NHL being done with them. A few boxes of spring/summer clothing remain along with a Rubber Maid box with towels. Still a work in progress, but it is organized and you can move within the room. In addition to this, I also managed to do two loads of laundry.

• Monday – Next up was the dining room. After dinner, I started to work on the floors and piles within. JL and the boys started to work on the toys in the living room.I moved my knitting items into the third bedroom and made room for a container with games for the boys. A little drama happened this night during our cleaning session. JSL tripped over a pile of toys that were being moved. He fell right into something else and ended up with a nice goose egg on his forehead. Fast-forward to bed time. JSL was in our bed settling with JL. Suddenly I hear JL scream for me. I arrive on the scene to JSL doing his impression of a volcano. I will spare you the details and just say two loads of laundry from 9-12 that night included our blanket, sheets, matress pad and my pillow is gone.

• Tuesday – JL and I finished up the living room. Basically moving books, papers and coats to see what was in the room. We do not have a coat closet, so in the winter our little couch serves as catch all for coats, scarves, gloves and hats. We also purged lots of kindergarten work that we just do not have room to save. The toy area was also completed during this time.

• Wednesday – Before JL got home from work, I started my attack on the dining room table. Almost everything is currently off it. A few things of vitamins, my laptop, and a container of wipes remain. Items were added to the shred bag and then we had dinner and put the kids to bed. Once they were asleep, we finished up with the kitchen. The counters were tackled one more time and we cleaned off the refrigerator itself.  Now the only thing left to do is clear out the food when they come to deliver today.

As you can see, that has kept me very busy here. I will catch up with my e-mail replies, I promise. Are we finished with the cleaning? No way! Next up on the list of purging/cleaning is the upstairs room. We have not used it in several years. It is an amazing space with an additional half bathroom. It will be fabulous for the boys to have as a playroom. A perk will be that we can move a lot of the toys from down here up there. We hope to be able to start working on that next week when the boys are sleeping. Slowly, we will finish up this project and then move on to our bedroom.

The refrigerator is scheduled to be delivered today between 1-3 and JL is here to man the fort with me. If I ever doubted that we needed a new one, below is what I found yesterday in the back of the old refrigerator. This is the container that was collecting the water that is leaking inside. It is a solid brick of ice.