day eight

This is another instance of "why on earth was I saving this stuff?" Back when I was still in college and living in Mississippi, I had a CD wallet stolen from work, so I ended up with all of these CD cases but no CD's to put in them. For awhile I think they just got stuck in with my other CD's but for awhile now they have been hanging out in a box of random stuff, along with CD's of local artists I have run across in Chicago (don't want to get those mixed in with the other stuff). My plan was to take the inserts out and pin them up on the wall. I finally did that. I have no idea why it took me so long, but it is done. And looking at it now I'm wondering what the hell I was thinking.

day seven

You knew it was coming. Bathroom time! Expired medicines, face paint, old razors, all kinds of crap. When I do stuff like this, it feels more like a cleaning project that I have put off for too long, but it was still important because I was thinking, when they put that can of hair paint in the landfill, who knows how long that thing is going to be there? And it was only $1.47. Because it's so cheap, there's no need to hang onto it, and it encourages us to throw away something that's not empty. It just seems wasteful to me. We are really wasteful as Americans and that is a prime example of it.

day six

Another round of old clothes. There is a woolrich jacket in there that could possibly be from 1996 or earlier. In fact, I'm impressed with the dated stuff in this collection, it spans many eras of style. Like the Urban Outfitters jacket from about 03, a houndstooth jacket I got when I was in college, or the pants from 99 which I actually like but they are too small for me and need a little TLC to get them back into wearing shape. So off to goodwill they will go.

day five

I've been wanting to get rid of this thing for awhile now, it's going to goodwill. It's a tenor banjo, which I haven't seen many of, and the top string breaks over and over, so this was an easy call. The only thing is, it was my dad's, mom had bought it for him many many years ago and he'd never really learned it. Probably because it is awful to play with the string breaking going on. But anyway, I guess I had kind of been looking at it as a kid and thought it would be cool to have. My parents up and decide to give it to me one year as a graduation gift or something. I can't remember, maybe it was a birthday. But it always kind of bothered me a little, because they just gave me something that had been laying underneath their bed for 20 years to me as a gift. Kinda seems like regifting to me, of the very very late kind. I love my parents, I guess they're just cheap.

day four

OK, so technically I did both of these on Thursday night, because I missed Wednesday night's throw away session. I decided to go through some storage boxes that have old clothes/bedding in them and have another good old trash session. This time it was a bunch of old sweaters and shirts that I hope to never see again, much less wear, in addition to a duvet cover and an old blanket. And yes, that is a iron scorch mark on the gray blanket. About 5 years ago I left an iron on in my bed, and it did this to my blanket, going all the way through to my mattress. I just couldn't bring myself to throw it out though; I mean, it's still warm in the wintertime right? Plus it was a scorch mark, it didn't burn a hole in the blanket. I didn't take them to good will, I didn't see much value in them, although I do have some clothes that I won't wear again, but that are too nice to just throw away, so those are much more viable candidates for charity.
So far so good, however, as this is only day four, I'm a little concerned about about what I'm going to be throwing away in 10 days, much less 25. I'm not taking the easy way out though and throwing away tiny little insignificant things, and trying to make each session a real attempt to eliminate unnecessary things from life.

day three

Time to clean out the kitchen. Old peanut butter (I honestly didn't know it expired), a tupperware container that has a torn lid, an old silverware caddy, condiments, MRE's my sister gave me after Katrina (those things should be fine for a LONG time but if I haven't eaten it by now, it's not getting eaten). I did save the MRE napkin which is folded up about as small as a napkin can be. I have no idea what a lint remover was doing in my kitchen, but it doesn't work so I got rid of it. I also got rid of 2(!) christmas-themed cups (how did I end up with two?) and more crap that has no business being in my ktichen (e.g., old cat medicine bottle, flaxseed caps, a refrigerator roulette game I'll never play). So far, so good! Sorry for the picture quality, I will attempt to be better next time.

day 1-2

The reason I'm creating this blog is to track my plan of getting rid of something every day for 30 days. The hope is to get rid of junk, to quit putting off projects that I have delayed for too long, and to just generally use this as a way to arrive at a more uncluttered life. Right now, I haven't given myself any stipulations, so the first day or two I've been throwing away stuff I should have thrown away long ago. The first day, it was just a couple of empty boxes that were lying around the house. Yesterday it was an old bike seat and brake, along with some junk on my dresser. Today, who knows? I guess I should try to make the process harder, like saying throwing out trash doesn't count, or for example if I throw out an item of clothing, I need to throw out a whole group of similar clothing. For example, throwing away one bobby pin or whatever won't do anything, but at the same time I don't want to throw away everything. Let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes.