I have been busy at this for quite some time. I tried to hold a garage sale for several years but something always got in the way--some kid activity came up that I couldn't avoid or the weather turned nasty. Last fall I had to put a new roof on the house and after exploring the bank options (expensive and long term) I took money from my IRA and turned around and documented and donated a lot of functional high-dollar garage sale items to the Goodwill. They will offset the tax hit on the IRA early withdrawal. It felt good to move that stuff out.

My sister had sent boxes of books that I left unopened because I had no room for them. Finally in the late fall I unloaded all of the front room of bookshelves. This is a 15' stretch of shelves floor to ceiling. From their comingled place on the shelves I arranged them alphabetically and by fiction or nonfiction on the tiles in the living room (worked like a grid--very helpful.) As I worked I set the books I knew I wouldn't read or no longer wanted in books on the other side of the room. Those that I thought I could sell easily on eBay went in one box, but a lot of them simply went out the door. I rolled a book cart full of boxes into Half-Price Books and got about $30 for them. Not a lot, but the shelf space is worth it. I rearranged the shelving, moved the television and associated electronics, and was able to shelve what I wanted to keep from the five boxes of books my sister had sent.

I also donated a lot of clothes. I have a love seat in the living room where clothes are set that have been purged from closets and drawers. It has piled up since my daughter cleaned out her closet a couple of weeks ago. My house is still messy and cluttered, but I can't afford to just donate all of it. The stuff that I can ship easily and list reasonably on eBay will go that way. I sold an antique music box last month. 1890s, but missing a couple of important pieces. Someone in my great aunt's family decades ago had taken it apart and didn't reassemble it. I wasn't going to spend $1000 to $1500 to restore it, so I sold it to someone else to restore or use for parts. It was beautiful, but absolutely useless. And funny thing, it didn't bring me any closer to the family I didn't know very well. One less thing to collect dust.

And an interesting convergence of events--at the used book store yesterday I picked up a copy of Aslet's Clutter's Last Stand. I have one of his other books and read through it periodically, use it like a cheering section to move on to the next mess. This thread can serve as a tool also. I won't ever resort to the agony of one of those television decluttering programs--what a nightmare that would be! It was never so bad here that (except for when I wrote my thesis) I couldn't see the floor. That seems to be the tipping point for the television purge episodes. My goal is to have a lot of this out of here by summer so I can do the things I want to do in my spare time and not waste time addressing clutter. It really is a black hole, but you can turn it into deductions and cash and sometimes put it to good use by giving it to others.

SRS