purging

A while back, my friend Carol blogged about her purging challenge. One thing out the door on the first of the month, two things on the second and so on. At the end of a 30 day month, 471 (as long as my fingers worked in the calculator) items should leave the house. 

Then one of my dear sisters invited me to a challenge to do the same. 

In the middle of my busy existence, doing each day's purge was not an option so I worked with it. 

The day I found 16 books I put it on the list next to the 16th of September. 

In the end ... the stuff went and that's what counts. 

Some of these things are just whatever junk. I really can't figure out where all the containers went for these leftover lids. Serious!! I didn't cheat and take multiple photos of the same lids.

And here is where the challenge comes with my purging. Some people might just grab and throw ... I can't do that with all things.

The photo below (as well as the one above) shows cards and messages from both mine and Jari's 50th birthday parties. Yup. Sentimental me kept them. And before I could toss them out, I scanned them into the computer to make a Shutterfly book. That was Friday evenings activity last week. I live such a wildly exciting existence when I'm home alone!

The bottom right hand corner of the same group of photos includes a pile of magazines with loose pages on top. Same thing with that quick toss. Country Living  magazine is my favorite ever. It is the only one that I keep renewing for sure. So I page thru each one, tear out the pages and scan them into my computer. Tedious? It is. But it works. I get to hang on to the things I like to dream about and the newsprint leaves the house. 

And ... if I put those files like "Recipes" and "Crafting" on google drive ... I have them at my fingertips all the time. Because, realistically, my phone is never far away from me.

I'm skipping one of the 5 days of pictures here. It included boxes. From a keyboard purchase at least 10 years ago? From a printer we no longer own?! Serious issues. 

I could do another whole month of this stuff but it's too stressful. I did get rid of a few other things as well. Scrubs no longer worn to work became 1" strips for rug making. Old duvets did the same. This shower curtain was suppose to be more blue for the sake of the rug but the fabric obviously didn't react well with the navy dye and turned purple instead. I'll probably look at it for a while and then pitch that too. Because it didn't stay this nice shade of purple after it went through a cold rinse cycle in the washing machine. At least the bottle of Rit is gone!

A few corners are a little emptier and I'm working on others. 

There is hope!!
Then there are kids' baby boxes, baby books, photo boxes, home videos ....
All the stuff I cart around in life that is invaluable to me.