The decluttering continues. Broken lamps. A scrapbook of newspaper articles about deformed baby chimpanzees and children raised in dungeons. Holographic guitars. Things that only work with obsolete technology. Shoes of babies I’ve never met. Veterinarian records for pets that died decades ago.
Meanwhile, life goes on. I’ve been reading and knitting and baking. We drove GC’s son to Montreal yesterday. We’re going crow-chasing in the east end of Ottawa this afternoon.
But I’m coming up empty in the blogging department.
I think you should do a photographic essay of the most bizarre things you declutter! And I think you should leave them in interesting places for people to find!
What a good idea. I’m going to do that.
You may feel that your blogging is coming up empty, but at least you’re de-cluttring. That’s gotta be worth something.
I’ve been in a major decluttering mode too. I’ve always enjoyed it, to the point that I have helped a couple of friends declutter their own basements. I don’t know about you but I find it really cathartic, and yes, even fun. Nothing beats the thrill of finding your own grade 3 report card 😉
Chris, it is. Definitely.
Livefrom161, but the thing is – what do you DO with your Grade 3 report card? If you declutter it, you’ll deprive yourself of the thrill of finding it again and again.
Well, amen for St. Vincent’s and cheap frames. The Girlchild wants to put it up in her room because she thinks it’s hilarious that I was called a “busy little chatterbox”, lol.
Okay, good. I’m glad you didn’t throw it away. That’s my biggest fear, that I’ll throw out something that means more to me later than it does now while I’m in a decluttering mood. Even bits of ephemera that have survived thirty years in my possession, seem to have earned the right to remain. It seems sad somehow to cart them around all this time only to throw them in the garbage.
I struggle with this. But I do love the feeling I get as the load gets lighter.
Zoom!
I too am in going through sporadic surges of decluttering. My goal is to have the house clean (really clean..not just re-piled) by my birthday.
I am following a couple rules for my own sanity sake:
– If it’s something that I don’t feel I’ll want in a future household it goes out the door right away.
– If it’s not something I’ll likely want to use within the next 2 years it’s out the door. (some people say to follow a 1-year rule on this, I’m not that hard on myself).
– If it’s any kind of document/image under 11″ x 17″ and it’s sentimental in the least bit it gets scanned. There are very few original items that I need to keep this way and if I ever want to look at it again I have it in digital format. I’m lucky in that I also have an automatic scanner that duplexes for larger jobs – so old notebooks, etc. can have the pages cut out and fed through.
Anything tech related gets sorted on the basis of whether it’s obsolete, whether it has an expected current/future value, and anything that I have duplicates of are weeded out. This is where I slow down at getting rid of stuff, because it does come at an expense.You see for me I am too offended by landfilling tech stuff – everything must be recycled if possible. Unfortunately the current Ontario Electronic Stewardship chart that covers tech stuff going in for recycling won’t cover a lot of the stuff I have until after April 1st. Until then there is a cost of 50 cents per pound. So I have to wait till then to bring in a lot of the stuff.
Cheers!
Grade 3 report card you to huh 😉
On the weekend, I also de-cluttered the stack of papers (most now in the recycle bin or the ‘to shred’ pile) that were on my couch/floor. I was just about to tackle the dishes when I got called away for social stuff.
– RG>