I have been preparing our house for the market and in doing so, I have gotten rid of a lot of stuff! I am definitely the hoarder in our house. My husband could live out of two bags, use about five kitchen items each year, and doesn’t gather anything for future use or hang on to much for sentimental value. (Which probably means the items he has hung on to mean a whole lot more!) I am always tucking something away here or stashing materials there…all in preparation for “some day.” It’s also part of the teacher in me. Do you know many teachers that don’t have a ton of stuff or utilize every bit of storage available? But, over the last several years, I’ve been fairly good about going through things every six months and weeding out a little here and a little there. Today I’ll be sharing six simple ways to declutter your home and why you should! GIVE THINGS AWAY It’s nice to make money, but sometimes you come across something that you really think someone else could use and you don’t want to throw it away. If it’s the perfect fit for that person, they may adopt the item and add their own wear and tear! Anyone that’s had children knows that kids go through things so fast and it’s nice to save a little money by taking hand-me-downs from a friend or relative. If the receiver decides they don’t want the item, let it be. They’ll either get rid of it on their own or decline the offer. If they choose the latter, maybe the rest of this list will help. PACK If you know you don’t want to purge an item from your house AND you know that you will use it in the future, but it’s not an everyday use item, pack it up. We have several containers of things in our garage that are full of items we use once or twice each year. I have added close to 100 boxes of things to simply declutter our home while it’s on the market. I took a look at everything and kept the essentials (well, maybe even more than the essentials), and packed up the rest. How much time does it generally take the author to pack a container of items for the garage?  A. at least six months  B. several minutes to a few hours  C. a few years  D. not enough information
B
I was driving on Highway 35 on my way home from work. Up in front of me was a giant billboard advertising yet another jeweler, in ten-foot letters and bright silver watches like massive alien machines. The traffic slowed and stopped on the ramp as it bottlenecked further into the city, and my head turned to examine the sign and the blocked view of the cityscape and land beyond. Past it was another billboard, with the name of a casino as its only text, filled with collaged images of money, plush rooms, and dancers. A quarter mile further brought me to an advertisement for business management solutions. Another few hundred yards and I was urged to try the new sandwich at the new sandwich place. The sun set and the signs stayed bright as automatic light switched on. The city grew dark and the hills beyond feebled out, existing only in our minds and finally not even there. All that remained were the well-lit and shiny reminders that lawyers were standing by to take my case to court, and that somebody's air conditioners would outlast somebody else's. I had an idea. I made the call the next day. It would put me back a good half grand, but it would be worth it. There would be no design meeting; I sent them the image and it was printed. A few weeks later it went up. Now on my commute, when I paused in the crush of metal bodies, I looked up and saw mountains by Maxfield Parrish, reaching up to the clouds in impossible cragginess, rivulets and gushing streams painted down their sides, with the sun striking vibrant oranges and reds into the shadows of the rocks. There were trees in copper-patina green and still pools quieter than the middle of winter but warm as the first day of summer. No doubt people thought it was the first part of a two-stage advertising gimmick, or a filler to be used when no one was renting space on the sign. But I was happy. What city does the story take place in?  A. not enough information  B. Los Angelos  C. Chicago  D. New York
A
(Q).
Have you ever sat around and thought about how you’d create your dream kitchen if you had the chance? Well, we are on the verge of a move (whenever the house sells, we’ll move), and I keep thinking that I need to sit down and write a list of our “would likes” and our “must haves.” That way, when we are house hunting, we’ll already know what we’re looking for. For a chance to win an Un Amore custom-designed KitchenAid Stand Mixer from PartSelect, I have been thinking about the top three “would likes” for our new kitchen and decided to check out what KitchenAid has to offer! I discovered three appliances that would change our reality kitchen into a dream kitchen. We have two young boys that will change into tweens and teens before we know it. Big Brother has always been a good eater, open to trying just about anything we put in front of him. However, discovering that he actually does have some control over what he does, he’s lately turned up his nose on occasion. Little Brother is exactly like me when I was young. He turns his nose up at just about anything. Although he did just spend a week with his grandparents and decided he would eat and make up for lost meals…and make me out to be a liar! Anyway, I keep reminding myself as I find myself challenged at mealtimes, that soon enough, they’ll be eating us out of house and home. So, one of the larger dream kitchen appliances I’d like in our home would be a double oven! I just think it’d come in really handy when trying to keep up with their metabolism down the road! When you’re preparing a lot of food, you’re typically buying a lot of products, and the garbage and recycling bins fill up faster than ever as well. The second dream kitchen appliance I wouldn’t mind having would be the KitchenAid Trash Compactor, reducing our use of garbage bags and trips to the outside dumpster. Plus, I think I’d like not having to smell the garbage all the time! After the end of this story, the narrator is probably:  A. enjoying her new dream kitchen  B. didn't sell her old house  C. not enough information  D. not enjoying her new dream kitchen
(A).

A