Further Adventures in Decluttering

Today's project was to clean out the closet in the office. No big deal, I thought; I'd done a pretty thorough job of cleaning it out about two years ago, so it shouldn't be too bad.

I was wrong.

First, I found a pile of empty notebooks. Great! I knew I'd bought some a while ago; nice to know where they were. And you always need more notebooks.

And then I found the other four different piles of notebooks, mostly slightly used. Two pages of grocery lists, etc. I diligently sorted them out, tore out the pages of ancient crap, and set them in the notebook pile. This was worse than the sugar.

So I sorted and recycled and set stuff aside for the thrift store. 2 full recycling bins, 2 bags of garbage, half a carload of crap to go to the thrift store, and I was down to the last box.

I opened it up and saw that it was full of ancient memorabilia. Stuff from when I lived in Poland in the mid-80s, stuff from high school, etc. So I settled in with some dinner and started sorting it out.

I found more damn notebooks. Empty, for the most part, the kind we used in school in Poland.
They're about the size of a copy of Shimmer (though not as pretty), usually with brown cardboard covers.

That's right. I've been carrying a stack of empty notebooks around with me since 1984.


I also found a bunch of old family pictures.



This one is of me (on the right) and my sister, probably about 1974. We're sitting outside the pig pen; when I was growing up, we raised pigs, chickens, and geese. One year we had two sheep and a calf named Sam. Unfortunately, after Sam got old enough to jump the fence, he got turned into Samburgers.






This one is of me (in the center) having a lovely time at a family reunion.

And here's one more. Love that outfit!