Spring (Summer?) Cleaning…
I’ve been on a decluttering / spring cleaning kick over this weekend. Well really its a long time in the making, I just never have been able to keep a substained effort in really knocking it out. But this time I feel like I’ve made some progress, I gotten rid of some stuff and found other things I’ve been looking for. Mostly it is amazing how little of the stuff around that I really utlize because the rest of the stuff is stuffed or stacked away and forgotten because they are not easily accessible.
It is also a reminder how easy it is waste money on lots of little things that just end up sitting on a shelf or whatnot. Office supplies for instance, I have a nice little stash tucked away in a file cabinet drawer that I’ve picked up over time while browsing Office Depot or Staples. Sometimes they were just extra items when I was using a coupon or stuff I thought would make work easier but didn’t quite do the job. How often do you think I go in that drawer to get stuff though? Virtually never, half the time I probably wouldn’t think to look in there though in the first place. Admittely part of the problem is a lack of good spots to put stuff in my area so they stuck in spots like that and thus forgotten to a lonely exisitance.
Awhile back I came across a site called Organized Home, which in part discusses decluttering and cleaning. It has an article about the types of cluttering personalities. I can see easily see myself in those profiles, particularly the hoader and the deferrer when I’m going through my stuff. I guess in part the thought goes I worked hard to get X,Y,Z and why should I get rid of my stuff..(even though it just sits around). The worse part is going through books. My family is BIG on reading, thus there are lots of books around. I’ve read a good portion of them and of course there are some I’ll never get around to reading past the jacket cover. Becuase my bookshelves are full, some of the lesser favorites have made their way into plastic tubs in the closet and again its out of sight, out of mind. Its seriously not easy though to think about getting rid of them though. It would be nice if I could get rid of them on somewhere like half.com, but I doubt the sales would make a big dent in the stack. I also doubt the revenue level would be much of anything. Thats similar to why I don’t take them somewhere like Half Price Books, where I’ve got a decent amount of books in the past from. I’ve heard many stories of people getting rather minscule offers whenever they have tried to sell books to them. I know they are in the business to make a profit and thus its in their interest to pay out as little as possible..but come on. In the end, I’ll probably donate them to charity (Goodwill or library book sale, etc). Back to the grind though…