The Great Purge Begins...

...Again.

Usually it happens when we move. Or when we remodel. We sort through everything we own and get rid of "stuff." Although, sometimes the stuff seems to multiply by the time we unpack in the new place. How do we fit all of this stuff in the space we have now?

This is especially true when we move into a smaller place. My last three moves have been into increasingly smaller apartments. Each time I went through my books, my papers, my furniture, everything I owned. I donated a lot of stuff to Goodwill, and I threw out even more stuff. Occasionally, I have regretted throwing something out, but most of it I have not missed.

I had more practice with sorting and tossing three years ago when we moved off our floor at work during renovations. And since we were going to be on the same floor at the end of the renovation, we moved twice! And because I had no boss at the time, I had not only my own workspace and files to empty, sort, and pack, but also an entire other office. The whole department shared in the sorting and packing of our portion of two storage rooms on the floor. I was ruthless, especially since we were going to have less space for files and storage at the end of the renovation. In fact, during the cleaning out of the larger room, we discovered a whole set of shelves with things that belonged to my section that had been hidden behind a stack of boxes belonging to another department. These were things I had not seen in the two-and-a-half years I had been on the job, and no one had asked for them during that time. We threw out everything on those shelves, except for two copies of anything that we felt should be archived. I was so efficient that my coworkers asked me to help them go through their things.

"When was the last time you used this," I would ask.

"When was the last time anyone ordered this resource?"

"How many copies of this do we really need?"

"How much of this needs to be archived, and how much of the rest of it do we need to keep around?"

We don't? Then buh-bye. In fact, "buh-bye" got said so many times that it became the departmental catch phrase.

So here it is the beginning of my third year in this apartment--all 405 square feet of it. When I moved here, I did not really intended to stay this long. Yet the lease is signed, and here I seem to be for the foreseeable future. I am taking a good hard look at the space with an eye on doing some redecorating. I started looking at decorating books in the library and the bookstores--especially ones about apartments and small spaces. Soon I found myself leafing through, and then reading, books about organizing.

So, the first step in the redecorating process is to purge my stuff. I started it half-heartedly a couple of weeks ago when I brought home a new book and tried to figure out where on my bookshelves it was going to fit. Time to implement my friend Rachel's rule for buying new books: For every new book that comes into the house, two old ones have to go. Not only did I remove two books, I actually filled half of a copy paper box, which has been sitting in front of the fireplace ever since.

This week, I decided it was time to get serious. I implemented a plan to spend a minimum of 15 minutes every day going through stuff. Yesterday and today I started sorting my files.

Do I really need copies of the annual car insurance policies for every year dating back to when I first bought the car? No. Buh-bye.

Why on earth do I still have the instructions for putting together the desk chair that broke last year and was tossed and the bookshelves I gave to a friend over ten years ago? Buh-bye.

Accumulated plans and articles for the dollhouse I will probably never build--the most recent one dating from 2000? Buh-bye.

The information about puppets I can find in the library or online the next time I need it? Buh-bye.

By the time I took out the filled garbage bag this evening--almost too heavy for me to lift--I had emptied the equivalent of one of my six 24" long file drawers. Which will also go, yes, you guessed it, "buh-bye" at the end of this process.

I have a list. I will keep you posted.

Peace,
Jeffri

P.S. Be honest. After reading the title you thought this had something to do with bishops and parishes, didn't you?