Purge excess stuff

I went through all of our bills, paperwork and junk mail from at least the last year. I started going through papers at 10am on Sat and didn’t finish until 1:30 AM! I ended up shredding 4 brown paper bags worth of old bills and receipts and recycling 2 more bags worth of paper. Filing has now been moved to my “office” (in our dining room) so I don’t have a massive project to complete again! It felt good to purge, but my goodness! What a project! What a waste of trees!
I spent 3 days attacking the rest of hubby’s office & closet, while he was out of town leaving only various piles labeled with a post-it. I was careful NOT to throw out anything that looked un-important to me and instead left in a pile for him to sort at his own pace. Example: “To Do: Go through pile of to do lists!” He was happy about what I did in his “space” and has actually been able to find things. He was even more excited about what I found (his favorite watch, pictures from parties at our first apartment 7 years ago) and I made spaces in the closet to things that are most important to him (fishing gear, camera stuff, & biking accessories).
I pushed myself to finish cleaning (floors & such) the entire apartment from top to bottom in the following two days. Our apartment was well prepared to begin our final school year! Hopefully I am as well!

I have slowly been going through my apartment room by room and closet by closet trying to make sense of my mess. I have made so much progress these past two weeks & I feel really good about it.
I have completely finished my bedroom, the closet & the extra deep closet in that room. I am donating 4 garbage bags of my personal clothes, some knickknacks, junk jewelry and a foot spa. The dressers are cleared of clutter, which makes me feel better. My bedroom is now a retreat. I have been enjoying relaxing, reading and listening to music in bed. I still want my husband to go through all of his clothes and do a clean out too, but at least now everything has a place that it will fit. I actually have 4 cubic feet of empty storage space in my closet. I love that things are not busting from the seams.
I have completely finished the hall closet and the bathroom. The bathroom was easy, since it only has a small medicine cabinet. It now only has the essentials that need to used in the bathroom all the extras were moved to the hall closet. Its a tiny closet but it has so much stuff in it. I cleaned out the first aid kit. 90% of the pills and ointments in there were expired as far back as 1999. Geeze. I spent about $20 and restocked the whole thing this week. Now that I know what is in there – and can find things I am actually using things in there on a regular basis. I took all of my hair & skin products off my dresser and put them in the hall closet also. Shelf for me, shelf for my hubby, first aid, extra toiletries, bathroom cleaning supplies, & toilet paper. All non-related junk was removed from that closet. Organization never felt so good!

This goal is finished. There is a great deal more space in my closets and in my basement. It feels good. I’m still waiting for some things to get sold on ebay.

Done, yay. I’ve got a few odds and ends with no home, but I think we have less than average american excess. In the third world, it would still be a capatalist-materialist-pigs. But hey, I live in suburbia. This goal is done.

Now we have to tackle the basement.

left us with duplicates and triplicates of everything. In the process now of deciding what of our old stuff is sellable and what should be given away. Plus, we’ve got to go through our stuff in storage.

sigh.

about 20 pieces of clothing, I never wear. I packed them all up and put them in one of those world aid boxes. I don’t know how much of the proceeds actually help the poor, but really. They did me a favor taking the clothes off my hands.

an old mac laptop and another mac desktop. Ironically, the desktop can do a few tricks that my current desktop can’t. It’s the 8500, so it came with a TV card, that could actually record TV. I don’t have the space for another desktop, and if I don’t put it on Craigslist soon—it’ll be even closer to worthless. The laptop could be made useful for about 30$, the price of a new battery. It would be fun to have a laptop with functionality that wouldn’t hurt your feelings if you broke it. Anyway, we’ll see what it yeilds on ebay.

I have electronics that I bought and didn’t really use. I had an imic, and then I got a mac with an audio in. I have an extra palm pilot and a palm pilot keyboard. Anyway, I’m trying to ebay it all. What’s the point of having stuff like that if it’s not in use?

And a computer. I’ve got one more old computer and a moniter to get rid of.