The One Secret to Losing 80 Pounds- In ONE Day!

Being snowbound at my parent's house today, I had the time & opportunity to go through stuff. My parents were kind enough to box stuff up when they recently replaced their carpet & needed to move all three kids' stuff from the upstairs to the basement, then back upstairs again. A lot of this stuff is of the nostalgic nature, for example, every birthday card up to age 16, stuffed animals, and lots and lots of pictures from high school (some in triplicate).

So I spent a few hours going through stuff. A lot of the stuff was very special at the time, but doesn't mean much to me now. Some of the stuff is just stuff. And some of the stuff I still like and is very special to me.

I was rewarded, however, and found $10 in a high school graduation card!

After the go-through, I was inspired to weight the amount of stuff I was throwing away & donating. The total came to 80 pounds. Woo hoo! That's 80 pounds I will never have to move again. Even better, that's 80 pounds of stuff I will never have the THINK about again.

Then for my afternoon project, I decided to clean up my email. For the last 5 years, I've just been storing everything in my inbox & searching if I needed to find something. So today, I whittled 2500 emails down to about 40. That felt good.

So do your part to shed the pounds!

Ongoing Minimalism & a Mini-Fail

My minimalist philosophy follows the thinking, "Don't own stuff you don't like." I've done pretty well with stuff, but read a blog entry a while back about digital clutter (sorry, don't remember the blog so no link). Digital clutter can take the form of either programs or data we don't like or need.

A few weeks ago, I tried cleaning up the programs on my netbook. It went extremely well until I accidentally deleted my audio drivers (yeah, and they let me write code & access servers at work, mini-FAIL for me, but I fixed it).

My first data step was getting over denial that I have data clutter: I know I have a lot of data around, but it's all on the external hard drive, so out of sight out of mind? It's kind of like that "drawer" or that "closet" where we continually throw stuff and shut the door to forget about it. But it's still there. However, uncluttering digital stuff is just like uncluttering stuff stuff. Start small & do it in increments.

My first step was music since I could easily approach it with the philosophy, "What songs do I always hit NEXT when my iPod is on shuffle?" I deleted roughly 10% of my collection, not too shabby!

Next battle: pictures. Then: papers I wrote in high school & college. After that: personal email and I'm working on a new email philosophy in the process- email is not data storage, it's temporary, disposable correspondence.

The TX Project

Several weeks ago, my sister emailed me and asked if I would come down to her place in Texas over the 4th of July weekend to help turn their computer/random room into a playroom for my 9 month old niece. How could I refuse?! Not only do I get to assist in a decluttering & reorganization project, but I get to see my sister, brother-in-law & seriously adorable niece? (side note: my sister said she has some blog ideas floating around so I'm hoping for her to do a guest blog soon!)

So the TX room project...

The story begins long, long ago when my sister used to bribe me with 7 month old Easter candy to clean her room. I always thought I got the better end of the deal since a.) I got candy b.) I was able to organize her stuff so it was easier for me to find & borrow. My sister got married in 2005, thus a pile addict married a stuff spreader (I'm not telling who is who). They've lived in their house about three years & their computer room became the catch-all for both piles & stuff spreading. They wanted to clean out the room & make it a playroom, but also knew that simultaneously trying to convince the other person to de-stuff, de-spread & de-pile might not be a good idea, so that's where I came in. I got real food this time & not just old Easter candy. Win!

I gave them a list of questions to start thinking about last week, and both were ready to dig in a clean out! They were extremely motivated to get the project done & I only had to pull out the drill sergeant card a few times. They did a great job! Even the cat got in on some of the fun.

First, the results by the numbers since I really like numbers-

• 3 full bags of stuff to the trash
• 2 bins of recycling (mostly paper)
• 1 large bag of Goodwill donations
  
• 3 items listed in Craigslist
• 1 large box of books to go to Half Price Books
• 3 recycled electronics items
• 2 Best Buy buy-backs
• 1 nasty broken chair to the trash!

And now the results by pictures-