Saturday - Day #22
Spent over 8 hours inventorying the rest of the desk wall and filing cabinets. Logged over 1500 items. It really ticked me off to be spending my Saturday doing such a tedious task! I'm determined to finish this inventory though! The poor pets were all confused b/c I didn't eat lunch or even take a shower until 3:30pm this afternoon, but I'm on a mission!
Sunday - Day #23
Spent another 11 hours inventorying the office. I got thru the wall that has a cabinet, shelf, and closet. Also got mostly thru the wall that has a cube organizer against it. Counted over 1700 items today. This time I did eat lunch and take a shower before noon though. When I pulled everything out of the closet, this is what the room looked like:
I'm happy to say it looks much better now. The office count is up to 3252 items and I'm not finished yet. I'm counting everything - even down the number of sheets of tissue paper (404), envelopes (181), and ink pens (226). On a positive note - between yesterday and today, 503 items went to the trash including foam pieces for shipping (60), old checking ledgers that were shredded (50), ink pens that don't work (30), boxes (37), and little jewelry bags (39) I had from when I made/sold jewelry. Another 100 items were donated too.
Monday - Day #24
Praise the Lord!! After 8 long hours of going thru things in my office I am finally DONE COUNTING!! Who-hoo!! Here's an "after" picture of what the office looks like:
The final count is 4096 items! Oopf!! And that's with eliminating close to 400 more items today as I was going along. A lot of these items are packing materials, so I can't wait to start focusing again on selling things on eBay so I can use up these bubble mailers, jewelry boxes, etc!
Here's a before/after of the desk too:
Time to start grabbing crates out of the basement to go thru!
Tuesday - Day #25
The basement - ugh! That's all I have to say (even though it's finished and quite nice down there actually). I literally have not been in the basement to sit/hang out for nearly a year. It became the room where things got "stashed" and the door got shut. "Out of sight, out of mind" if you will! Here's a look at what I started with today:
I couldn't even get to the right curtain to open it. Talk about embarrassing! I am happy to say I was able to get thru 3/4 of the basement though (thanks to an 80's music revival while I was going thru things). It was pretty easy since most of what I went thru ended up getting thrown away or donated. If it's been down there that long and untouched, it probably didn't hold too much importance, right?! I still have a little ways to go, but so far the purge count is up to 2648 items. I'm averaging a 20% purge, which is good, but I still have a LONG WAY to go!
Wednesday - Day #26
Today was really productive! I started off by going thru items in the garage and throwing a lot away. (172 items to be exact). I noticed my neighbor had his recycling bin out and he's usually always right as far as what day it comes. I drug all kinds of stuff out of the garage and out to the street to be picked up!
...And then I realized that the neighbor (and several others on my block) was wrong and recycling doesn't come until next week. So, pulled the recycle bin back up to the house and loaded all the stuff I piled up into my car over 3 separate trips and took it to the local fire station where they have recycling dumpsters. It was messy, but I was so happy to get rid of everything! I literally gained an extra 2 feet of space in my garage so I can pull my car further in. Go me!
Came back and finished the basement. Here's the "after" photo:
Kitty is happy and so am I! The TV on the table is broken, but I need to call for bulk pick up to get rid of it. The big TV is one of those really old ones with the huge back on it that takes up that whole corner. I initially told hubs I wanted to get rid of it, but on second though, it's good enough to watch baseball games on (and I don't want to buy a TV until I see if we're actually going to spend time down there). The total inventory for the basement is 609 items (with 100+ of those being picture frames/photo albums, 54 books, and 61 CD's).
I also inventoried the downstairs bathroom and the laundry room. I ended up throwing away 184 items out of the laundry room! I had NO IDEA I even had all that in there! Turns out the cupboard was stuffed full of junk. (Over 100 pie tins that were my grandma's that I had saved for years just b/c they were hers, old outlets (a few years back, we changed the outlets from a cream color to white and I kept the old ones for some reason), rags, plastic bags, buckets, and other randomness). The final laundry room count is 140 (with the majority of it being paint cans and hangers). I'm going to start asking around to see if any of my friends/family needs hangers and give them away!
All I have left to inventory is one more storage area. I'll do that tomorrow and then I'll really start focusing on purging! eBay is having a free listing promo for the rest of this week, so I need to get to listing! My trash bin is full/overflowing (and trash day isn't until Friday) and so is the recycling bin (even after my neighbor let me put some recycling in his bin). So, I am in a holding pattern as far as throwing more items away. I've tossed over 2100 items this week alone (not counting what I've donated and sold). Who-hoo! It feels so good to get rid of things (even thought there's still A LONG way to go)!
Thursday - Day #27
Started the day off by taking 203 items to Goodwill and donating them. Then, around 1pm, I officially became an aunt again to my sister's first baby! Everything else took a back seat after that! There were a lot of things she needed for when she brought the baby home, so I withdrew some money from the eBay sales fund and went shopping for my new nephew. Funny thing is, I stashed that money in an account, but never really knew what I was going to use that money for. (I thought maybe I'd use it to take a trip or something). It was so nice those funds sitting there and to not stress about not having enough money to buy her what she needed. I didn't go wild buying toys and things that weren't necessary either. I bought basics like baby bibs (OK, so maybe the one did say "Awesome Like My Aunt"), a portable changing pad, a teether, a rattle, a health care/grooming kit, multi-use crib pads, etc. (And one really cute toy that reminded me of one my sister had when she was little). Funny thing is my sister squealed when she saw the bottle of Dreft baby stain remover and said she really needed that! It really is the little things!
I also found this little guy while cleaning out the basement yesterday. I bought it years ago when I though maybe one day my husband and I would have a baby. That hasn't happened yet, but I knew my sister didn't have a nightlight for the baby's room and she would love it! Sure enough, she went right up and put it in her bedroom so she and her husband didn't stumble around in the middle of the night when they were checking on the baby.
Friday - Day #28
Didn't get home until late last night from my sister's house and then woke up at 4am wondering what my nephew was doing (ummm - he was sleeping like I should've been) and wishing I could hold him! Needless to say, I'm tired today! Still, I paid some bills (including paying off the next credit card on my Debt Snowball list) and then sent out this text to my mom and sister (after I sent my sister a picture of 2 notebooks b/c she mentioned she needed one yesterday to write down the baby's feeding times):
They both texted back and said they needed some of these items, so I made them both a bag of goodies. Getting more stuff (307 items to be exact) out of the house! My mom and dad were in town, so they stopped by for lunch and I sent their bag of goodies home with them. Who-hoo! My mom thought I had lost my marbles when I told her I counted my sheets of tissue paper and she saw me writing down how many Ketsup packets we used during lunch so I could deduct them from the food inventory, but that's OK. (I reminded her that I don't do anything half-way, so when I decided to do this, I wanted the numbers to be accurate). While we were eating she said she wants to start purging things in her house too, which is great! Go mom, go!
In the end, I still have a 3 really small shoe boxes worth of stuff to go thru and some boxes of holiday decorations and items in a little storage area, but other than that, the counting is finished! Now I can really focus on getting rid of things!
Totals for this Week:
Current Inventory - 10,726
Items Purged - 2663
Items Donated - 897
Items Used - 244
Items Sold/Returned - 41
TOTAL ITEMS ELIMINATED = 3845
(3845/14571) = 26.3% of items inventoried have been eliminated so far
Next week's goal: Hit the 4000 mark for items eliminated (either thru purging, donating, using, or selling). Since I go back to work next week, there will be a lot less time to focus on purging, but I think 155 more items is definitely doable!
Long term goal: My mom asked me today what percentage of my items I wanted to eliminate. That's a great question! I hadn't really determined a set number or percentage. I initially said I'd like to be down to 2000 items or less by the 1-year mark of this purge. That would mean living a drastically different way than I am now (which wouldn't be a bad thing). I think a more realistic goal for me at the end of 1 year would be 5000 - 7500 items. That would mean eliminating over 1/2 of what I own in the span of a year. Considering I started out with so much stuff and want to try to use and/or sell as much as I can of it (which takes time), I think that's very reasonable. Then maybe during the second year I can step it up a few notches and try to reach that 2000 mark. We'll see! As I've said before, this is a journey, not a sprint.
Has anyone else been purging along with me? If so, how's it going for you?
XOXO,
Stephanie
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