Honestly, yes, taft, just get it out any way you can. Seriously--you are in charge, not the stuff. That's my "Take It Out Back and Smash It With a Hammer" philosophy. Here's another one of my theories: I call it my "Stop Me Before I Kill Again" theory. It will all end up in the landfill anyway. Eventually. It will wear out, get broken, become so out of date nobody wants it. Everything. Seriously--everything. It all goes in the garbage eventually. Just like--we all die. What the end will be is never in question. It is just a matter of time. And, more important, it is a matter of how much good or evil we do (or the stuff does) along the way. Right now that stuff in boxes is evil. Remember your words: "I was feeling so hemmed in by the stuff in this house I couldn't take it anymore. " That's evil--that's what that is. That stuff is a little (or big!) piece of evil in your life. You can't move; your home doesn't feel welcoming; you look at it and feel horrible about yourself. That's evil. Seriously, it is. The stuff is crying out: Stop me before I kill again! So, you have two choices: rehabilitation or execution. If you can rehabilitate it (give it away to someone who will use it; get it into a recycling bin; sell it for money) easily, that's a sensible move. But will it rehabilitate? Will the cost--emotional cost, time cost--be prohibitive? Do you want to find someone who takes "stuff" and sorts through it to find stuff they can sell on eBay? (an eBay entrepreneur?) Do you want to give it to a thrift shop somewhere, so they can see if they want anything? Do you want to pay your college-age/teenage son/neighbor (or maybe your neighbor's cleaning lady) to go through it looking for stuff like money or photos? But all that sounds like a lot of work, with little guarantee it will be viable. Remember, the stuff will continue to work evil while you sort through it. So just toss it. If you're pretty sure you won't lose a $10,000 bearer bond, or something, just throw it out. (I found $40 in cash in a box I sorted through--but it was just one box of sorting. If I had 18 boxes, and someone said, "would you pay $40 to get rid of them?" my answer would have been yes. So you might not need to be that concerned about what's in them.) Good luck! OH! Here's one other option to consider: Let this forum be your discipline. If you want to, you could decide that every day you will eliminate one box. Every day. (Or, OK, every Saturday, you'll eliminate 3 of them, minimum.) Post here, and tell us how you're doing. (Or, make that a real-world situation, which will be more powerful, even: If you've got a good friend, ask her to come help you sort through 5 boxes every Saturday morning; you'll buy donuts if she'll help you. Even if all she does it sit there and say to you, if only by her presence: "Hey, I gave up my Saturday morning to help you get rid of boxes. Get off your bum and get rid of some boxes; don't waste my time." Don't have a friend? Hire a cleaning-lady-type person for a Saturday morning, several weeks in a row, and get boxes, trash bags, and directions to a donation place in place before you start.) Go get 'em, taft!

I tried to quickly scan through. I don't know if someone made this suggestion yet. Can you put doors on your cabinets? We had open shelves on either side of our fireplace. I had my husband make doors for them. He made frames and covered the inside of the frame with cane. (we had to since they hold our tv components and I was afraid that they would melt down if no air got to them.) But, you can get tons of different sized cabinet doors at the restore or something similar. With the ones my husband made, I just painted them and put them up with regular old hinges. They look pretty good. I was going with a more natural/coastal theme. So, they work well in here. Oh! I was thinking. If you have odd sizes (like we do) you could just have lowes cut you new doors out of that mdf and paint them. Just don't get really super thick mdf. It paints like a dream with a roller and you could get the odd sized cabs covered. Melamine doors if you don't want to paint. But... you don't have to do all of your shelves. Maybe just the bottom half. It will break up some of the visual clutter. And, you can hide actual clutter (like we do!) which is really the main thing. :) Kim

"Serenity, are you really suggesting that if the parents can't afford a separate bedroom for each child, that they shouldn't have another child? that a separate bedroom is a 'birthright' of sorts?" I guess, in a nutshell, what I'm getting at is that EQUALITY and FAIRNESS is a birthright, yes. Every kid feeling equally a part of the family and their needs considered equally is a birthright, yes. If *every kid* has to share rooms or to go without privacy for the entirety of their time with their siblings and parents, then that's just as equal and fair as if every kid DOES have privacy for the entirety of their time with their family. But these in-between "some have privacy and some don't" situations are less than ideal and ripe for conflict, especially in a blended family. It's often unavoidable, but it's certainly not ideal. It's one thing for SS and BS to have to share a room because neither can share with the older, female daughter. But there IS an extra room, and now the reason becomes not only that they can't share with a girl, and she as the oldest has 'seniority' and 'older' lifestyle/mentality that merits privacy... but now a little baby who has no 'seniority' or even mental capacity to distinguish Self from Other from floating blobs of color swirling around his/her little head suddenly outranks the boys in terms of privacy needs. And not just because of crying noise and such, but the main problem is that presumably the baby is going to KEEP the private room indefinitely. So we will have the boys outranked by not only the older girl, but also by their younger sibling. If the baby is a girl, that's one thing. But if it's a boy they will wonder why the younger one gets a luxury the older two boys don't have. SS especially will wonder this because BS at least has his privacy and his own space the majority of the time, only having to share it with SS 4 nights a month. SS always has to share, never gets the feeling of having his own space. Or worse: he had it for a little while, but nope, no more. Now there's going to be someone else who's apparently more important, and now there will be no room for him to have his own 'place' so he will just have to be shoved in somewhere and begrudgingly tolerated by the brother whose room he invades a few nights a month. The point is that no kid should have to feel like just because they are the STEP (or the bio) that they don't merit the same consideration of space, privacy and just a 'place' (literally) in the household as any and all other kids in the family. There is already so much loaded potential for someone to feel short-changed, or 'out-ranked', that yes, I think it's best to avoid risking anyone feeling that way if at all possible. And again, this is all based on the condition of the family having the means and how they choose to prioritize their expenses. A *TRULY* struggling family, especially in this current economic situation, will not be able to move to another, bigger house tomorrow or next week or perhaps ever. (But they also probably wouldn't be purposely planning on having another mouth to feed.) There's perceived limitations and then there's REAL limitations. There's not thinking you have enough space or means, and then there's REALLY not having enough space or means. The differences really do matter, but even regardless of actual means, I would say (along the lines of the thread Doodle just brought up) that if you can't (or won't) afford extra kids and the costs/adjustments of treating all your kids fairly and providing them each with space, privacy and making sure they all feel equally part of the family and their needs equally provided for, then you really shouldn't have extra kids. Or at least you shouldn't be PLANNING for them (I'm a big fan of birth control) unless/until you know that you can treat them all fairly with a minimum of stress and conflict. The further you have to (or perceive you have to) stretch a limited amount of resources, the more potential for conflicts. Which a blended family already inherently has enough of. When you knowingly, deliberately set up a situation in which resources will not be allocated evenly and therefore somebody has to lose out, you are knowingly setting up everyone for a conflict and for somebody to feel short-changed and like the outsider. Why would somebody knowingly do that, presuming they have the choice? But if you know you can provide each child with their own room, then that conflict at least is nonexistent and no one has to feel like the outsider. Creating and/or buying space for every kid to have some privacy in the house is the first decision/sacrifice of many, a relatively simple first step considering all the other many expenses and adjustments you will be taking on (and making everyone else take on) for each new kid you decide to have. That's why I say it's a good guideline because it's practical as well as symbolic. If you can't make THAT situation work fairly for everyone, then you're going to have trouble keeping things flexible, workable and equitable in the ever-expanding blending family in the future. That's all I'm saying... So I guess another relevant question here would be: "is an entire private bedroom for a newborn baby a birthright?"

In my last kitchen, I used the cabinet between fridge and range top as Sandwich/Snack Central. The wall cupboard held some casual glasses and mis-matched mugs, paper plates, peanut butter, Nutella (!), S&P, etc., box of sandwich baggies. Top drawers below held a set of casual flatware separate from what we used at meals, a few sharp knives, cheese slicer, a few spatulas, etc. Middle drawer held bread, rolls, chips, the toaster, crackers, and a couple small cutting boards. Bottom drawer held leftover containers. This area also housed my coffee and tea stuff. The new house will have a separate beverage center, but except for that, the area between fridge and range top will be very similar to the old setup. I found it so convenient to have separate utensils for this area -- no running to the regular flatware drawer to make a sandwich! Until then, my picnic utensils sat unused in the picnic basket 99% of the time . . . these found a new home and constant use in the sandwich center. Over the years I accumulated other items in this area that were useful there, like the mismatched mugs we use for ice cream and the scoops. Worked for me!