A few posts ago I stated my intentions to make some changes and keep you posted. Since then I have made three trips to the dump [in my town you take your own trash... no automatic scheduled pickups]. In total I have removed 23 bags of stuff from my house. Some has gone into the hopper, some to the recycling bins, and some to swap shops, Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc. Before sending me cheers I must confess that for my rather large family 3-4 bags of trash per week is the base line before my new sorting resolve. So at least 6-8 of those bags are predictable.
I wish I could say that my house looked substantially better, but the truth is that I could probably remove 16 extra bags every two weeks for months and still not have reached the end state. Mind you, the "public" rooms are looking better, but even they progress slowly. For example. I took four large grocery bags of books to my library's book sale from the upstairs book shelves. You would think I now have empty shelves.
Au contraire! The shelves don't look substantially different to the untrained eye. How is this you ask? The secret is that almost every bookshelf in my house [and I have more than most small libraries possess] is double shelved, with two layers of books on every available inch. So now I have several shelves that are now merely single shelved. Maybe not the end goal, but a good start. I managed to release my old college textbooks [except for one written by a favorite professor]. I even freed two shelves of books on tape... my latest car has only a CD player and my walkman cassette player is dying. [Oh, all right... I kept the Katherine Hepburn and Christopher Reeve autobiographies.] Progress is the key.
Hello. My name is Gail. I am a packrat.... but I am still trying.
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Good for you. Small amounts of progress are still progress. I can totally relate to the bookshelves. In January I have to -- really have to -- tackle that myself in Paris. Too late now. I leave for Charlottesville in a week and still have many unleft tasks to finish before taking off.
ReplyDeleteI commend you. Last week I got tired of navigating our spare room and took almost one car load BACK to Scrap. It's a little upsetting to give up on projects (both planned and to-be-realized), but I feel much more at peace. There's something about all that "stuff" that just makes me feel like I'm not doing enough. I had to give myself a break and admit I don't have the time. ...Funny things is- you can always find more "stuff" if you ever decide you need it. That's the beauty of it. Good job.
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