Beautiful Static: The Purge Project Part 3: De-cluttering and Organizing

This has been so much work.

Besides the other victories expressed in earlier purge posts, in the course of the three weeks I spent purging:
1. I filled the large rolling garbage and recycling bins twice.

2. I only spent $25 on a few small organizers because I had so many empty boxes and containers from the purge.

3. I got rid of every piece of paperwork I didn't need using this advice:

I am left with a huge bag of paperwork that needs to be ~~shredded~~ burned in a campfire. S'mores anyone?

4. I had no social life. My background noise was provided by the last few seasons of How I Met Your Mother (before the terrible ending) and the Parenthood. Friends reading this, now you know why we couldn't hang out.

5. I found $75 in random gift cards. Score!

and finally...

6. I tackled the bookshelves:

Bookshelf One Before

Bookshelves Two and Three Before

During.

After.

I'm down from three bookshelves to just one. The tall one is now holding records in the basement. The short one is going into the guest room and will replace a cheap particle board cabinet.

I will keep the square bookshelf forever. The Hubs made it for me one Christmas and it is one of my favorite gifts of all time. The shelf is too full, but I'm a reader and--like keeping my Converse and T-shirts--I'm not going to compromise my love of books. So many people have said, "Just get an eReader!" Come on people. I have a Nook, but I still like the smell of books. I also can't read to learn without writing in my books-- I don't care if there is a way to take notes in eBooks.

I went through all of my books at least three times, but it was tougher to purge the books than the clothes because I have memories attached to so many of them. That said, I did purge a giant IKEA bag full of books. This bag of donations went to a teacher friend and then the Three Rivers Free Store.