ASK Musings

No matter where you go, there you are.

Saturday

25

October 2014

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Cleaning Up

Written by , Posted in Random

As part of my attempt to sort out my IRS issue, I decided to pull everything I have in storage. The goal was to see if I still have a bunch of old documents from when I first purchased the stock in question. I did (hurrah!), but I also realized that I had a lot of other stuff that I don’t really need.

An example is my pile middle school and high school yearbooks. This might be controversial for some folks, but I have no real need for my yearbooks. I don’t ever go back and look at the notes written, or even the pictures. That might be because I’ve always loved taking pictures, so I’ve got a lot of pictures from when I was younger. And those giant books take up a whole lot of space considering how often I look at them.

Another example is the giant stack of articles and papers from my studies in London. That took up an entire plastic bin, and it was much harder to part with. On the one hand, I have all my notes and papers saved online and backed up. But on the other hand, I probably can’t access the list of articles I read again. It seemed a little bit like accepting that I won’t be pursuing further study in the field. Which is accurate, and has been accurate for a couple of years, but the finality of actually throwing it in the recycling bin gave me pause. Still, I did it, it’s gone.

Other items, like photo negatives and my college diploma, I’m keeping, but I was able to consolidate way down. I also pulled out my old homecoming tiara and sash to give to a friend’s daughter to play dress-up. By the time I was done, I’d reduced three 2′ x 2′ x 2′ tubs to a handful of items that I could spread throughout the apartment. As a bonus, our storage unit now only has Austin’s climbing and camping gear (which wouldn’t be in the house anyway), and a taken-apart bistro table and chairs that we hope to use when we finally buy a place to live some day.

Austin is going to clean out the guest room closet on Sunday, which hopefully will result in a big trip to Goodwill in the afternoon. The key now is to not buy things that will fill that space back up.

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