September decluttering challenge

On Monday I came home from work and found a beautiful e-mail from my Mum in my inbox. It started like this:

"I was wondering today who I could share Jesus love with and then I thought who better than my children and nieces and nephews. So this is to let you know how much I love you and how much God loves you too."

She then went on to detail some of the ways she was proud of me, from things I helped her with as a young child to things I do now. The e-mail ended this way:

"So I have a challenge for you. The challenge is this: What will you do for the month of September that would make Grama proud of you?"*

As I finished reading the last few lines of the e-mail, I racked my brain, trying to think of something I could do this month that would make my Grandma proud of me. Something that I could actually manage to do throughout the majority of a month. I knew that promising to do something like cook three-course meals every day or stop eating sweets would only last a few days before I gave up and went back to my normal ways.

It wasn't until Tuesday night as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep that I had a thought that might work: decluttering. For the past several years, since my grandparents moved from their house into a smaller condo, my Grandma had been working very hard to give items from her home to others who could use them and would love them anew. She made an effort to go through trinkets and other items and give them to relatives who would treasure them, and she gave away most of her precious library to her children and grandchildren, always brilliantly knowing who would most appreciate this book or that series.

After all the work Grandma went through to pare down her household items, I knew that going through my own and only keeping the things I really love and use often would have made my Grandma proud of me. And I also know that I really need to do it anyway to prepare to move when Jonathan is done his master's in December. On top of that, on Tuesday afternoon Jonathan had gotten a call from our landlady's daughter, who let us know that our 93-year-old landlady, who was previously living with her daughter, is now going into a residential care facility and her family needs to sell her house in order to be able to pay for her care. While it's likely that this old farmhouse will not sell within the next three months, we know it is a possibility, and the more we can go through and sell, donate, or otherwise get rid of, the better if we unexpectedly have to find another place to live while Jonathan finishes up his schooling.

So here I am, ready to dive into this decluttering challenge throughout the rest of September, and likely throughout the rest of this calendar year. There are many boxes and files I have purposely left alone until now because I know they will be incredibly hard to go through. I have several boxes of childhood trinkets that I don't really want to display because, although they are filled with memories, I absolutely hate dusting, and trinkets on shelves collect dust like kitchen counters collect crumbs. I have many files of high school and college papers that I've gone through once or twice already to weed out homework assignments, quizzes, tests, and notes that I can easily just look up online. I will now have to go through them again and decide which papers and essays and short stories and news articles are good enough to keep, and then scan them so I can keep a digital copy and finally feel free to recycle the hard copy. This will not be easy as I am quite sentimental about some of these items, but it needs to be done and is long overdue.

Please wish me luck! If I find or think of anything moderately interesting to write about as I go through this process, I'll consider posting updates. If not, I'll just keep plugging away. Here's to the end of 2014 finding this apartment a lot less filled than it used to be! :)

*My Grandma found out that she had lung cancer near the end of last September. In one way, it seems so long ago, but in another, it seems like almost no time has past since then.

Clean-out

The past week has been a whirlwind of going through clothes and some of our things in storage. Between Tuesday, Friday, and today I've gone through my entire wardrobe, trying on most of my clothes and carefully critiquing all of them to decide if they are appropriate for a 6-months-to-30-years-old woman to wear.

You see, I've had a problem with my wardrobe, one that many other people might not identify with. While most people grew out of their clothes throughout elementary, middle, and high school, and college, I didn't. A pair of running shoes I bought slightly large to grow into in grade 6 or 7 were still slightly too large on me when I graduated from high school. And there is one skirt in my current wardrobe that I've had since grade 8 (I have, for now, decided to keep it, since it's a style/pattern that doesn't seem to ever go out of style). For the most part I didn't grow out of my wardrobe from my younger years, and somehow most items survived those years without too much trauma and still looked almost as good as new when I was done with them.

Of course, even though I didn't wear these clothes out or grow out of them, many of my clothes from high school have long since left my wardrobe. But I do confess to still owning clothes from my early days of college (almost 11 years ago now). Year after year, I would cart my favourite clothes to and from college, and until we moved ALL my things to Maine last year, I didn't have my whole wardrobe all in one place since heading to Southern in 2007. So this week, I went through them all. Old clothes, new clothes, select clothing items my sister decided to give away a few years ago that I thought could work for me, pajamas from every Christmas Eve for the past 10 or so years, all of them.

The end result is that 42 clothes hangers have been emptied* (and several of those held more than one item of clothing), my hanging clothes have much more room in my closet, and my dresser drawers are not packed to overflowing. Two bags of clothes -- one normal plastic grocery bag and one extra-large one -- have already been taken to Goodwill while running errands in town last week, and two more extra-large bags are tied shut and waiting by the door. One will follow the other two to Goodwill and the other will hopefully go to a local consignment store.

Jonathan also went through much of his wardrobe and found quite a few items he simply wasn't ever wearing and didn't think he would ever really wear again, and we donated them, too (part of that first extra-large bag we already donated to Goodwill).

Bags waiting to go to Goodwill and the consignment store

What actually got this whole wardrobe-revamp-ball rolling was that early last week Jonathan and I decided to go through some of the items we're storing in our back room (a half-finished bedroom where we're keeping all his tools, part of my personal library, tons of games, and lots of other stuff until we move into some place with more closets and/or a garage or workshop). In the past, we have mentioned wanting to get rid of this or that, but this week we grouped all those items together in a To-Sell pile. Jonathan spent hours taking pictures of each item and listing them on eBay and Amazon. If those options don't pan out, we'll turn to Craigslist. With only one more semester left before Jonathan finishes his master's degree, we're realizing it's time to get serious about deciding what we want to keep, pack, and move along with us, and what we want to let go.

We have a ways to go yet, but I'm sure we'll go through our clothes and some of our other items several more times in the next six months. For now, it feels good to get these un-used or under-used items out of our house, and hopefully others will find them more useful than we did. I'm already enjoying more space in my dresser and closet and fewer choices to make each time I get dressed!

Notes: Ironically, I read one of Mr. Money Mustache's latest blog posts during this past week. It was quite timely and gave me some extra fortitude to keep on going through my clothes, and hopefully soon to go through other items as well.
*Those 42 hangers are from both mine and Jonathan's wardrobes.

Downsizing my dresser

A few weeks ago I tackled a BIG job: going through a large box of clothes that I hadn't seen (or missed, really) for at least two years (if not longer). I knew it would be too tough to sort through by myself because, while I am the perfect person to help others clean-up, purge, and organize their things, I have huge nostalgia problems when it comes to going through my own items. I have no idea why clothes, among many other things, are so nostalgic to me, but they are. Many of the clothes in this box were from high school or my early 20s, and since I hadn't so much as looked in the box for two years, I knew there were many things that I needed to give away. So I asked Jonathan to help me as I went through the clothes. Anything he said didn't fit me anymore, or was too out of style or faded or stained to wear out in public, would go into the Give Away pile. It worked! I tried on almost all the clothes in that box that night (there are just socks and pajamas left to go through) and put a good chunk of them into the Give Away pile. But some of the clothes, in order for me to be OK giving them away, had to have one last picture taken. Just for me to remember them by (cause it's not like I don't have any pictures of me wearing them earlier in my life, right?). Now don't worry, I'm not going to post all those pictures here, but I did want to share two of the more memorable (read, hilarious) items with you, just because they make me laugh and you might get a chuckle out of them, too.

Exhibit A:

Sporting my way-too-big and bad-colour-for-me Math Contest T-shirt

I acquired this T-shirt in the spring of my grade 11 year by winning a spot in a math contest sponsored by the local university, Okanagan University College. Yes, I am completely serious, I was in a math contest. When I was in grade 11 our math teacher had all the grade 10-12s take a not-for-credit math test. The top two scores on the test in each grade went on to the valley-wide math competition. I came in third in my class (not such a huge accomplishment since that year there were only fourteen grade 11 students, but the girl who got first was an exchange student from Japan, and I did beat out the science-and-math guy who eventually managed to become valedictorian). It turned out that the girl who got second didn't want to go to the competition and backed out. So I was the next in line and I decided that even though I had guessed on a good number most of the questions, a day off of school to do the competition and then tour the OUC campus wasn't a bad idea. I must say, the test went terribly! I probably still have the paper with the results somewhere. I know I was in the bottom section, and the worst part was that there was one girl at the competition who I knew from violin lessons. She had been a student of my violin teacher until a few years before, so I recognized her and knew her name. She ended up near the top of the list, probably in the top 10 or 20. Yeah, so that was a bit embarrassing, especially since the results sheets included our names, schools and scores... Anyway, so that's the story about my much-too-large, very-yellow math contest shirt. A kind of good memory, but quite a terrible T-shirt that was only ever used as PJs. I hope someone who really likes math finds it at the Bangor Goodwill and really enjoys it, haha.

Exhibit B:

Trying on my Tootsie Pop toque

The rest of the saying on the back

So the first year I was at Southern, 2007-2008, my younger siblings surprised me with a gloriously random birthday present. It was so much fun to open the present and pull out all kinds of fun and crazy things they'd bought at Wal-Mart. Crazy fuzzy socks, colourful tights, some T-shirts, candy (of course), and this Tootsie-Pop toque (or, beanie, as they say down here). Bryn and Tyler thought it was hilarious, and I agreed. None of us had ever seen a Tootsie Pop or watched any commericals about Tootsie Pops, and it was only when Bryn and I showed the toque to our friend and suitemate, Danielle, that we figured out what the saying meant. Thank you ever so much, Danielle, for explaining about Tootsie Pops to us. We might still be in the dark if you hadn't filled us in! So, I think the only time I ever actually wore this toque was for a picture right after pulling it out of the bag of presents. Since I have a plethora of toques (all except for two of which are too big for my puny head), I decided I could give up this one. Hopefully it will keep someone's head and ears warm for the rest of this winter and into the future!

Of course I have stories about all the other items I managed to pry out of my life, but since I've already told them all to Jonathan, I'll leave you with only the two above, and just show you the pile I donated to Goodwill.

The clothes that didn't make the first round of Revamp My Wardrobe

Ahh, it feels good to have these clothes-that-never-really-fit out of my life. I still have a lot of clothes, many that I hardly ever wear, but for now I feel really great for going through the ones that I hadn't worn for the past two years and probably never would have. I'll go through my wardrobe again some other time (my closet needs a thinning out next), but for now it's nice to have a bit more space in my dresser and be able to see all the clothes in my drawers!