own less stuff

My goal was to pack for 8 hours this weekend. A broken car put a damper on my plans. I’m housing sitting so I haven’t been around to do 15 minutes here and there and being able to transport myself was central to my plan. Still, I managed to pack for about 2 hours yesterday and have been stuck at the house for much of today. I didn’t accomplish as much as I’d hope today because I spent over a hour fighting with a shredder that I jammed. Still, my room has managed to look horrifying. Why do things look worse when packing instead of better? sigh Anyhow, I’ve found 4 pairs of workout pants to give away. Hence, my entry. I’ve also found a pair of shoes to discard and an old wallet. Things are moving along, I guess. There’s really not much choice at this point.

Wow. This is what this goal was mostly about—having less stuff to pack and move when it again became time for me to move. I’ve been working on this goal for 3 years now. wow. I started packing this week. I have about 3 boxes and a suitcase ready to go. I have a ton of items left to pack. My original goal was to move in August but I changed that to September due to work obligations. Mom is not okay with the change so I’m moving in August but honestly expect to have a lot of things in her house until September. My focus now is to pack things such that I can move my furniture in August. Hence, most of the packed boxes contain books, notebook, and movies—the things that were stored on my bookshelves. My large bookshelf is about 1/3 clean now. I can’t say that I’m aware of having less items than when I started 3 years ago. It may be that I simply would have had more had I not been constantly throwing things out. I’ll let you know how the move feels after it’s done. It took something like 6 cars for me to move from GA to TN without furniture. We’ll see how many carloads it takes for me to move across the city without furniture.Regardless of the outcome, I like to think that I’ve developed healthier habits from this 3 year voyage. Time will tell.

Based on my description in my last entry, I’d guess that I’ve cleaned once in between this entry and the last one. Regardless, I haven’t cleaned as much as I’d like. I planned to clean for 2 hours on Monday but didn’t get to it. I’m taking a boss-mandated sick day today and was able to go for 1.5 hours. My chester top is clean! Hooray! I also emptied all shopping bags on door and bed handles. Not fully unpacking has become a bad habit of mine. I threw away/recycled some papers, not many though. Still, I guess this helps me with my goal of owning less.

I just spent another hour working on my dresser. I thought I was going to get to the bottom of a side but no. However, I did remove enough that I could push my radio over so it was no longer hanging off the edge threatening to fall. That push probably contributed to my inability to see the color of my dresser top, of course. Anywho, I didn’t find anything especially interesting tonight. I found information on perks for a credit card and was fascinated that most of the papers were from 2007, with some going back to 2006. Three years of papers accumulating in one spot? imagine that. I want to be done with this task (i.e., cleaning off the dresser) NOW but alas, there’s still more to remove.

I still haven’t begun to pack because I really want to get rid of this paper first. Remove it/organize it or drag along the pile. I choose to not just pack it up. I can do this.

I spent 30 minutes today and 30 minutes earlier this week cleaning off my dresser. I can FINALLY see a difference. It only took like 3hours of work. Seriously.

Eek. Last entry was in Feb—has it really been that long since I’ve uncluttered? :/

Anywho, I plan to move in June or July so this uncluttering/organizing/owning less things thing is kind of coming to its finale. The goal was to own less stuff so I wouldn’t have as much to move when I moved again. I’m headed into the packing stage. Today, I spent a hour cleaning off a dresser top that I really want to clean before I leave. I figure it’s go through it all and deal with it, throw it all away and hope that none of it was too important (and I’ve found some important things in my on and off dealings with it), or move it all and have a pile of junk when I get to the other side. I don’t want that last situation to be the reality. That was the same thing that motivated me to clean out the mail trays (which are still doing pretty good, BTW). Sadly, I can’t tell the difference in my dresser even after a hour of work :o. Still, I will press on. It’d be nice to have it clean this month but that doesn’t look too likely since I’m booked this weekend and it’s the last weekend of the month. I’ll keep you posted. :o

I spent another 3 hours cleaning out my mail trays and I AM DONE. Yipee! That makes 5.5 hours for the month. That means I technically owe another 30 minutes, but I was ahead 60 minutes last month so it only washes out. AND, I accomplished the month’s goal. That’s the best part, followed by finding things like birth certificates and debit cards.

Tonight, I spent about 2.5 hours cleaning out my mail trays. If you came over and looked, you’d think “Gee, those mail trays sure are messy!” but I can tell the difference. The bottom tray holds reuseable paper. I packed most of it in folders that I plan to send my nieces and nephews for drawing notebooks. The one above it was the messiest of all. I worked on it for nearly two hours. It went from overflowing to simply full. I found my birth certificate and some debit cards, among other things. I need to resume these activities tomorrow if I want to be anywhere near the 6 hour goal for the month. C will be in town next weekend and cleaning out my junk is not on my list of things for us to do together when she’s here.

The other thing I threw away is a heating pad that goes around your back.

I’m not very good at tracking how long I work at things. I went through clothes that need to be altered several nights ago because my mom wanted to get a hem in her pants. I figured I needed some hems too so why not let her pin my pants and send them with her. Well, most of my pants are now too big and need true alterations; I did find 1 pair to send with her. I spent, I don’t know, 30-90 minutes on that. I’ll count it as 30 because I didn’t really accomplish much. It made me LOOK at what was in my bags and note how many bags I have sitting in my corner. Some things need patches, some need to be altered, and some probably just need to be thrown away due to their material. I don’t want to move on the alterations until I figure out how much money I have designated for such things. So, finance then junky corner.

I arranged CDs A-M. I don’t know how long that took. How about another hour?

I went through a drawer in my “mail” bins and paper clipped the reuseable paper into 4 different stacks for my 4 nieces and nephews that will receive them as gifts. Today, I checked Target & Kroger for 3-prong folders. I didn’t like how much they cost so that’s still a work in progress. My gym is near Dollar General so perhaps I can pick them up tomorrow. Or, Fred’s is near my house. I really don’t think I should have to spend more than .30 per folder…. Say- 75 minutes for all of that?

That gives me an additional 2 hrs, 45 minutes. That time may or may not be true. The total for the month & year is 6 hours, 35 minutes, giving myself a bit of time for the items I’ve been throwing away in passing. Ooooh- I also finally washed a sweatshirt that’s been hanging outside my closet door for a month. I took it to the cleaners to get a stain removed but that didn’t work. I bleached it to see if that would work; it didn’t. I’m not sure what to do with this sweatshirt. It’s from my graduate school so I’ll probably wear it with what looks like grease stains on the front. Or not. For now, I still have it, it’s taking up space but no longer disgracing the hall.

On second thought, I’m bumping the total to 7 hours because the clothing thing resulted me in organizing things in bags based on the kind of alterations needed AND it took time to put all of that stuff up after I took it out.

In the past few days, I’ve thrown away a CD (Eminmen, backup but skips) and an iron. I think there was something else too….