Sell or give away 27 possessions before I turn 27

I got rid of 12 articles of clothing over the weekend—a couple old skirts that were either too big or too small; two pairs of jeans that, even if they did still fit, were totally unflattering (do tapered jeans look good on anyone?); a couple sweaters from my high school days; a couple shirts from my college days. I packed it all into some Trader Joe’s paper shopping bags and toted it to Goodwill. Also, I didn’t buy anything new at Goodwill to replace the things that I’d given away.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve gotten rid of our old living room furniture, too. Our old couch is going to my sister, our old coffee table went to Goodwill, and our old entertainment center fell apart and had to be donated to the trash compactor. Sigh. But now we have a nice new living room that fits our sense of style. Adam is very pleased; he’d had that entertainment center since he was in college, and it wasn’t made of anything approaching quality materials. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that it fell apart.

12 articles of clothing + 3 pieces of furniture + 7 articles of clothing to Goodwill a couple months ago = 22 items gone. 5 more to go before May 11.

I took seven things to Goodwill last weekend. 5 shirts, 1 pair of shorts, and 1 skirt, I believe. I was definitely not ruthless enough with my clothes. I tend to keep things for reasons of useless sentiment. Adam, in contrast, got rid of about 20 things from his side of the closet.

I need to go through my handbags and shoes sometime this week and get rid of those I’m not using anymore.

My 27th birthday is May 11, 2007. Before then, I’d like to rid myself of some of the clutter in my closets and on my shelves. I mean, I don’t wear those plaid shirts from Old Navy anymore, but I’ve no doubt that there’s someone who would. I keep my stuff in good shape. Same with books—I’ve got a number of books that I’ve read once and probably won’t read again, but they look good and probably even smell like new books. I don’t feel the urge to own a ton of books the way I once did. Something about moving to another continent and then moving back home a year later does that to a person. I left a lot of books in my apartment in Japan and have only had a few pangs of missing them. Mostly, though, I hope that one of the next residents was able to enjoy them as much as I did.

27 possessions isn’t a lot to sell or give away, but it’s a good starting point.