practice discardia

- trashed a pile of weekly to-do lists from 2006 or 2007
- trashed a pile of weekly menus, probably from the same period
- trashed several floppy disks and floppy disk storage boxes
- shredded a pile of documents containing financial and/or personal data
- prepared a bunch of things to take back to my parents (including my Dad’s math books that I used in high school and university – it’s hard to imagine any other discipline where you could use the same books for over 30 years!)

And with that, I’ve officially gone over all of the stuff I moved to this place, found a place for everything and either put stuff in its place or gave/threw it away. Yay!

- threw away about a 100 cds
- packed a huge bag of clothes to donate (including some of my favorite clothes, forever lost to gods of wrong-washing-machine-settings)

Moved the rest of my stuff from my old place to my new place! WHOOHOOO!!

_{ohgawd I hope I haven’t forgotten anything}

And, as this is a discard-ia goal after all:
- threw away three more bags of trash
- gave away a scratchy, ugly orange blanket I’ve never liked
- urm, put away a box of chocolates :D

- sorted another box of knick knacks, managed not to keep them all
- threw away installation CDs for really old software and a bunch of outdated backups (kept the Rollercoaster Tycoon CD :))

I found out the Red Cross is having a donation drive this Saturday right in front of my building. Perfect timing – I’ll bring another load of stuff from my old place today, mostly clothes, so I’ll have enough time to sort them.

There’s a candy shop in Barcelona that sells different kinds of candy and packs them to look like medicine. They’re called Happy Pills and they’re awesome.

I have two bottles of “happy pills” brought to me as souvenirs by friends. _{grrr jealous} I keep one at work, replenishing it regularly. The other one is still intact, but I’m going to open it and eat the candy right now.

But I want the keep the funniest parts for posterity. The paperbag says:

Composicion

3% Azul cielo, 5% Amarillo limon, 2% Chiste verde, 7% Carcajada descontrolada, 4% Humor negro, 8% La vie en rose, 2% Cosquillas, 7% Naranjas de la China, 1% Fino humor British, 2% Retranca gallega, 6% Accento andaluz, 9% Gol en el ultimo minuto, 2% Esencia de amanecer, 7% Ho ho ho, 3% Algodon de azucar, 2% Agujetas de reirse, 5% Con faldas y a lo loco, 4% Rio de Janeiro, 3% Tijuana, 7% Excipiente de John Cleese, 6% Ramo de margaritas, 5% Siesta del Mediterraneo. 100% Happy Pills.

The bottle says:

Happy pills – Against Mondays

Instructions for use: Against Mondays, the pineapple diet, Sundays without football, Sundays with football, global warming, washing machines that break down without warning, grey hairs, PMT, the male menopause, square roots, the unbearable lightness of being, the rebel curls without a cause, the jinxed weather man, the keys that lose themselves, the price of housing in general, and specific boredom.

Dosage: Consume cheerfully.

People are idiots. I put an ad on the local equivalent of Freecycle, for a couple of band T-shirts, and wrote that anyone wanting the T-shirts will have to come pick them up. Next thing, I have 10 emails saying “I want the T-shirts, please send them by mail.” Should’ve just chucked the things into the donation box and saved myself the trouble.

Anyway, yesterday I:
- went through the rest of my books and made a “donate to library” pile (btw, I have an embarrassing number of ‘girls’ guide to life’ and ‘style/clothes guide’ books)
- sorted through my clothes and separated a big pile for donation
- threw away various knickknacks (ugh, there’s another box of them waiting to be sorted)

A small step for mankind, a big step for me. :P

Oh, and also, the boyfriend decided to finally (FINALLY!) pack up and deliver about a shelf-worth of paperwork to his grandma (she used to live here and some of her mail still comes to this address).

Btw, there was a thread on Metafilter one of these days about hoarding and decluttering. Wise words to remember:

All of the computers on Ebay are mine. In fact, everything on Ebay is already mine. All of those things are just in long term storage that I pay nothing for. Storage is free.

When I want to take something out of storage, I just pay the for the storage costs for that particular thing up to that point, plus a nominal shipping fee, and my things are delivered to me so I can use them. When I am done with them, I return them to storage via Craigslist or Ebay, and I am given a fee as compensation for freeing up the storage facilities resources.

This is also the case with all of my stuff that Amazon and Walmart are holding for me. I have antiques, priceless art, cars, estates, and jewels beyond the dreams of avarice.

- sold one tech book (1 kg/1000 pages of math)
- put up several books on BookCrossing – I’ll wild-release them if nobody wants them
- made my boyfriend clear up some more shelf space (ok, technically, that belongs to his discardia goal, if he had one ;))

This discardia period nicely coincides with me having to move the rest of my stuff to my our new place. I paid the rent for September, so I have until October 1st to move out. We went there yesterday and packed books and papers and some clothes. What’s left is mostly clothes and shoes and random boxes and drawers full of I don’t know what.

I have a tendency to accumulate all kinds of souvenirs, tickets, leaflets, old issues of magazines and assorted crap I never even think of, let alone look at or use, thinking “ooh, this is neat” or “ooh, this might come in handy”. This goal is here to encourage me to get rid of it, to celebrate my (small) successes and to preserve a memory of the things that I’ve gotten attached to and couldn’t part with easily.

So, last night:
- threw away a box of trash, including three terminally ugly and cheap handbags that I’ve never used
- threw away random souvenirs that were cute, but I got them from friends traveling to wonderful places, as opposed to me going to those wonderful places, so they only inspired feelings of jealousy :P (kept one shot glass from London though – that one will probably get used regularly ;))
- threw away greeting cards from “usual suspects” that I receive every year – kept a few that put a smile on my face
- threw away a pile of magazines that I kept only because they had articles about my favorite hockey team – I’ve read them and never looked at them again
- donated to my ex-roommates a pile of empty small boxes and containers – they’re useful for packing small gifts, but I never remember to use them anyway, so what’s the point
- packed a pile of blouses I never wear, because there wasn’t a donation box nearby and I didn’t want to throw them in the trash – but they’re going to the donation box next to our building as soon as I unpack the bag they’re in

Early today (before work! ha! I’m a mean lean discardian machine!):
- threw away printouts of web articles that I’ve read and kept thinking maybe someone else would want to read them (they’re online and free, anyone who wants to read them can do so without me giving them the printouts!)
- threw away another box of trash
- unpacked our lovely new trash can and threw away the ugly old washing powder box that we used as a trash can :P
- packed a pile of books to take to my parents’ place for storage (they have, oooh, about twenty times more space than I do!)
- packed a pile of books to be given away through BookCrossing (would anyone here like a book or two?)

There’s a lot more work to do, but it’s a start.

I gave around 200 (!!) CDs and DVDs to a friend. Theye were only collecting dust on top of my closet. I probably have at least a hundred of them left, but it’ll be easier to give (or throw) them away now that I’ve started. It feels so liberating.

The first Discardia holiday has passed and I’ve done most of the things I planned to do. Stay tuned for Discardia II in June. :)