Monday, April 27, 2009

binge and purge

The ol' decluttering process is actually starting to show, and not just on the inside of the cabinets and drawers. A couple areas (the kitchen and the bathroom) are actually just about where I want them to be, where I just have to work on maintaining, rather than continuing to purge. The office area and the bedroom still have a ways to go. (You can tell where I let the "projects" accummulate) I've been thinking of skipping the tidy areas and focusing on the not-so-tidy areas in the weeks to come, but then I thought...I should give em one more run through. I'm sure if I forced myself to, I could come up with seven more things I could get rid of from those areas.

But this week wasn't about the kitchen or the bathroom. It was about the living room, which has some project accummulation, but is getting neater by the day.

April 20: Under the coffee table I have some baskets where I keep papers I may need at a later date. I had some job fliers I got in the mail in case I wanted to get a part time job for my Fridays off. I don't. recycle

April 21: Same basket, I had some catalogs from local community colleges. I've taken some classes in the past. But I don't need to catalogs from the past. recycle

APril 22: Happy Earth Day! I pulled out a few more magazines from the magazine basket and brought them to work.

April 23: OK, on to the piles on the coffee table: I went through the work pile and brought the student manual back to work, finished up some forms to bring back to work, and completed the expense forms for a course and brought THAT in to work, too.

April 24: I finished a book I had been reading that my Mom lent to me. Returned it to her today.

April 25: The THIRD basket in the living room area has DVDs and videos. Mainly exercise videos. But since I mainly bike, run, and swim for exercie now, I don't use them much. But I have friends who exercise at home. I forced myself to pull out three exercise videos or DVDs to give away to friends who will use them.

April 26: Laudry Day! I put a pair of pajama boxer short bottoms into the donation bag.

Next week is boxes and bins week!

1 comment:

Lacey said...

One thing I noticed during MY purging process was definitely paper. So many papers... all that were SO vital at the time...

For instance, I would get a financial aid report, or paperwork regarding my car insurance, or whatever. So I started piling them up in one of my desk cabinets. Because they were important, right?

Not once in the history of the desk cabinet have I ever had to resort to looking up old paperwork. NOT ONCE! Because, of course, everything I could ever want to reference is on-line.

So after cleaning out my desk (sceeeeery), I had two whole large trash bags stuffed with shredded paperwork. Sigh.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who hangs on to catalogues and fliers! Hopefully I can learn not to save that stuff in the first place. :-)