Starting to purge

Today was a down day for me. Not "down" as in depressing, but "down" as in relaxing and not really busy.

I slept in a bit and then just kind of vegged for awhile. I cleaned up my kitchen and watched some Monk. I need to put up my Christmas Tree but I need to plasticate my windows first and I need to get more plastic to make sure I have enough. So that'll have to be tomorrow.

But I did start going through my storage area. I have a small area in our storage area where I can lock up my stuff. The big problem is that, other than my Christmas stuff, I haven't really gone through any of this stuff since I moved in to this place almost two years ago. A couple people have told me to just throw the boxes without even opening them because if I haven't needed it now I don't need it.

The problem is that most of the boxes are full of books and I have a very big problem with throwing away books. And an even bigger problem with just throwing away boxes without checking to see what's in them.

I've been avoiding this project for a very long time, but I finally decided to just start going through things.

The sad thing is that most of the crap I have in that storage area is just empty boxes. A lot of them I had broken down (i.e. flattened) and shoved on the side of the area, but a lot of them hadn't been. And those that hadn't been were full of bubble wrap or packing peanuts.

Ugh.

So I dumped two 13 gal garbage bags full of packing peanuts and flattened a bunch of boxes for recycling and cleaned out my storage area a bit. It feels pretty good to have gone through a bunch of that, but *sigh* all those boxes of books! Ugh... I don't know what to do with them.

So tomorrow I'm going to clean my bedroom and purge some clothing again (I found a box half full of stuff that was intended for Goodwill...and I have a feeling there is at least one more, if not a couple, still in storage). And then I may have to start sorting through books. I'm thinking a box of "must-keeps", a box of "maybes", and a box of "sell or give away". The latter I'm open to suggestions on - not sure about where to sell books. I know I can take them to Goodwill, but I know some are kind of expensive and selling them might be good.

It's a good feeling to get rid of things that I don't need anymore. I need to stop buying things I don't need too. :) But it's nice to feel like I'm accomplishing something.

Though the sneezing from all the dust isn't too fun.