organize my stuff

Now I have my girlfriend’s stuff to organize. And my girlfriend has piles of stuff the likes of which I can’t even wrap my head around. Joy.

I organized my closet last night, which I didn’t realize I was so badly in need of doing. I’ve always been kind of neurotic about how I put clothes in it, so that I can wear them in some semblance of order (because otherwise I wear the same three t-shirts over and over), but it was getting kind of out of hand. Since the weather suddenly went cold, I figured it was time to set it up for proper winter usage. While I was in there, I went ahead and refolded and stacked all those extra blankets and towels I’d just tossed up to the top shelf. Now I can get to anything in there right away, and it’s going to be very easy to maintain when putting freshly-laundered clothing away. I am pleased.

Of course, I still need to go through that pile of stuff that’s been sitting in my easy chair since I moved in. Plus I really need to clean out my desk and organize it properly. But progress is progress.

I just realized that I’m almost entirely done with this goal. All I have to do at this point is sort through that last tiny little pile of stuff taking up the chair in my bedroom, and I’ll be completely done. I should really put this at the top of my list for, say, next week.

First, when we were packing the old apartment, I made sure I got rid of the stuff I blatantly had no room for. The giant entertainment center that my parents got when I was five, the television that’s older than me, and the combo TV I got in college that’s never quite worked right: out the damn door. Donated and gone from my life.

Then, moving in to the new apartment, I unpacked every box, even the ones that were just going to be repacked for long term storage (Christmas decorations, etc), and I moved some of the furniture (an extra bookshelf, an extra dresser) that I thought I would want but actually didn’t in to the basement.

Then, and this was the part that really hurt, I went through every single book I own, and forced myself to fit them all on one bookshelf. Then I took the resulting piles, boxed them up, and donated them to the library. (I tried to sell them, but nobody was interested. V. sad.)

Now, I have one box of various tchotchkes to sort through, and one small box of papers that I am going to sort through and hopefully digitize and discard. Since I know I won’t be able to part with some of these scribblings, though, I’m at least restricting myself to one file box and what fits inside it.

Apparently, the trick is to move in to a place that’s just way too small to fit all your crap. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing so, but it definitely seems to have worked for me.