Cleaning up my act

I had coffee with a friend yesterday. The time with my friend was nice. The coffee was sub-par.

We both mentioned the need and desire to "spring clean"...going through EV-ERY-THING and weeding down our possessions, getting rid of excess stuff that is hiding away in our closets, and throwing junk away! We decided to make it our summer challenge...and to keep each other accountable.

Clearly our discussion lit a fire in my pants because after lunch with the family, I went home and cleaned for over three hours. I took one big trunk and cleaned it out completely so that it can be used to store the "give-away" items. I cleaned out my hope chest moving a box of items into the "give away" trunk, that I've been carting around for at least 8 years...and filled the hope chest up with the items that I really truly want to hang onto.

I then grabbed all those photo envelopes...you know, back in the days of film photography...those countless bulky envelopes with the negatives. I went threw Every.Single.Photo(!) and threw out the ones I could care less about or were awful to begin with and kept about a third for memento-sake, adding them into my hope chest.

Next, I have this brown dresser, that needs some tender-loving-care (but from the next owner), that I use for bills and other such documents that one should hang onto. I took out the drawers, went into the living room, and filed all my bills by company. I DID NOT file them by date...that, my friends, is another project for another day (maybe). I figured I could easily grab the entire company stack, and sort through them, if I ever have a need for referencing an old bill.

I ended up throwing out a large stack of papers, throwing away a small heap of trash, and my trunk is half filled with "give-aways." Hooray! I feel so good about this. Somehow, having things neat and tidy makes me feel more "grown-up." Aah...maybe I'm maturing a bit! :)