At long last! #LTYM videos are up!

On May 2 of this year, I had the great honor of being part of the inaugural "Listen to Your Mother" cast in Indianapolis. On May 3, I was more than ready for the videos of the show to be uploaded to You Tube. Imagine my disappointment when I found out the videos wouldn't be posted until sometime this summer. Well, folks, SOMETIME is NOW!

You can watch the entire "Listen to Your Mother -- Indianapolis" on You Tube. Do it tonight. Pop some popcorn, pour yourself a favorite beverage, grab some tissues, get ready to laugh and have a grand old time watching the show. Seriously, this group of women is smart, honest, talented, funny.

If you just can't wait, maybe you could watch this video, you know, kind of like a trailer.

Of course, that was me. Hey, it IS my blog. I didn't actually hate watching myself, although I have definitely decided to cut my hair short again now that I see it in front of me. And that blouse? The one that my mother said before the show that she didn't like? Yeah, it's going in the Goodwill pile. Hello, saggy boobs!

But on the whole, I'm proud of that moment in my life. Thanks for sharing it with me.

10 steps to becoming a hoarder

1. Early in your married life, take organizational tips from your mother-in-law (RIP), such as "pile stuff in laundry baskets to deal with it later."
2. Start a scrapbooking habit, take zillions of pictures, then fall desperately behind in scrapbooking for, say, 7 years. Put all the unscrapped photos into laundry baskets. Pile scrapbooking tools into a corner nearby.
3. Move on to stamping and create a smaller, though similar collection of rubber stamps, inks, paper.
4. Inspect bags your husband is hauling up from the toy room to take to Goodwill. Remove 40% of what he attempted to giveaway. You're saving the toys for the grandchildren (who might be born in 15 years or so).
5. Don't have the heart to decline anything offered to you by your husband's 92-year-old grandmother, even if you really don't need a battery-operated talking parrot, 3 Clinique giveaway bags or a yellowed U.S. map mounted on plywood. You don't want to hurt the woman's feelings. 
6. Marry a man who cannot part with anything that has to do with Star Trek or Star Wars.
7. Ask your children "do you want this?" before you throw anything away. 
8. Be sentimental enough to want to keep a newborn-size diaper (unused, of course), the hospital wristband your daughter wore when she had her tonsils removed, and the first letter your son wrote to Santa, plus about 17,000 other small pieces of their childhoods.
9. Maintain enough optimism to truly believe that you will fit into those clothes or they will come back into style someday.
10. When you finally decide to get rid of stuff, waffle back and forth between giving it away, throwing it away, saving it for someone else you know who might want it, or trying to sell it on Ebay. Put stuff in laundry baskets until you can make up your mind.

Clean sweep

I spent about six hours today cleaning out four closets, four dressers and a desk. Unfortunately, none of it was in my own house. Instead, my sisters, my brother-in-law Steve and I gathered at my parents' house to take on the job of cleaning out three bedrooms that are only used when we come home for a visit.

We started in my sister Angie's old room. She worked on one walk-in closet, while I dove in to the second. Considering that my parents have lived in this house for 16 years or so, we found some pretty interesting things, including:

• A sterile cup that held the metal screw that used to be in Angie's ankle after surgery for a soccer injury.
  
• Two sailor dresses from our annual sorority "Cruise Night" rush party
• About a dozen or so old dance recital costume and a nun costume
• My mom's senior prom dress (which we counted has been moved to at least seven different houses)
  
• A couple of Angie's kindergarten projects (mind you, she is 31 years old)
• More pairs of old underwear than I care to count
• Lots and lots of old pictures, one of which I'm going to scan and e-mail to AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com

In my sister Shelley's room, we found enough wrapping paper, gift tags, curly ribbon and gift bags to stock the North Pole for five years. Never again will I have my kids hit up Grandma for the annual wrapping paper sale. Shelley's closet yielded several outfits that once belonged to a now-deceased distant relative that my mom felt the need to take in. The only thing that could be worse than Mom taking these clothes and storing them in a closet for five years would be if Mom had actually worn them in public. Off to the Goodwill with them.

My brother Nick's old room actually had a few useful items in it, not too surprising since he's only 4, 6 and 10 years older than my kids. I snagged a couple of boxes of math flash cards (won't my kiddos be happy!) and two sport coat/pants outfits that may come in handy for the next time we have a wedding or a funeral to attend.

All total, we bagged up seven 55-gallon bags of trash and delivered eight 55-gallon bags of cast offs to the Goodwill. That's 825 gallons of stuff! We're going to list some of the furniture on Craig's List and a few smaller items on eBay.

I'm only heading home with a small laundry basket of items, which is one benefit of having never actually lived in this house. Just wait until Angie's husband eyes the three boxes of stuff she's bringing home.

It was a big job, but we had a lot of fun going through some of the stuff, especially the old pictures. So much fun, in fact, that we're looking for a date to come back and tackle the basement!