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Post by ohblondie on May 21, 2014 13:24:51 GMT -5
You got me wanting to purge my books Diane!! But they are all packed in boxes in the basement and I have more pressing issues to deal with upstairs. FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS....I am so easily distracted.
So monday night I had a meeting. Last night was the school budget vote and school board elections. I had to man a table there for 1 1/2 hrs. (at least I got a short shift) Tonight is my 87 year old aunt's concert. She went to my concerts and my kids concerts through theyears - so I am going to hers. So that effectively wiped out my week.
Guess I need to double down tomorrow. Friday I am going to see Santana and Rod Stewart.....free tickets make it even better!
Saturday will be all out busy day........... I have a plan to attack the kitchen and get it ready so I will hopefully stay focused.......
Diane - you are inspriring me to keep on keeping on........
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Post by ohblondie on May 21, 2014 13:25:12 GMT -5
Accidently posted twice
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Post by dtesposito on May 21, 2014 13:40:25 GMT -5
Hi Lucie, thank you--forty seems like a drop in the bucket when you consider how many I have.... Blondie, you do have a busy week! I hope you can get some work done on Thursday. Get your family to help! I'm home earlier than expected today so should be able to keep working on the books. It would be nice to be completely finished with the series books, although I suspect there may be a few more lurking around here in unexpected places, no doubt they'll show up later in the summer. Diane
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Post by dtesposito on May 21, 2014 19:04:23 GMT -5
I do believe I am finished with my series books, with the exception of the odd stray that will turn up as I continue decluttering. I have a total of 90 books to get rid of--of course, all the remainder fit in the allotted space because of my aforementioned cheating. But, I feel really good because I did admit to myself that whole authors or categories of books can go, because I won't read most of them--there are other books that appeal to me more, and if I need a book outside of my main fiction interests, I still have a good selection here (not to mention the library). I have the books divided into the ones I'm going to donate in the neighborhood, and ones I would like to bring to the same place my senior client is bringing her donations this month. A few are going to my sister also. My hallway bookshelves look lovely, if I do say so myself! That's a second category that I'll consider done, once I get the purged items out of my apartment. Diane
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Post by dtesposito on May 23, 2014 20:44:11 GMT -5
Today I took a handful of stuff out of a bag of miscellaneous hardware junk, just to get a feel for what it will be like to sort this category. In that random handful, I had several nails, several screws, some miscellaneous items like hooks and anchors, and about a dozen things that I didn't have any idea what they were. I'm starting 3 Ziploc bags, for nails, screws and miscellaneous, and will throw out anything unidentifiable. Or, that I know I won't ever use. But wow, the hardware is going to take forever. I'm not planning on saving every single nail and screw, but it does seem like I can never find the right size when I need one, so I will keep a decent number. Now I have to try not to count every single minute item that I throw away from this category.....
I had a victory this week--last week I unearthed my stuffed bear from it's hiding place in the kitchen cabinet, and instead of carrying it around for the next million years, I gave it (I'm trying not to call it a "him") to one of my dog walk clients to give to her dog. This dog loves stuffed animals, carries them around for a while and then has great fun ripping them up. I feel good knowing that a wonderful dog will have a lot of fun with my bear. Which is, after all, just fabric and stuffing. Sigh.
Now I have to convince myself to get rid of my crocheted afghan--that's the next hurdle.
Diane
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Post by dtesposito on May 26, 2014 20:29:13 GMT -5
This weekend I've been working on books, which is good--but to the exclusion of everything else, which is bad. Now that I'm eager to work on this goal I don't seem to be able to make myself keep up the other things I had been doing, namely, decluttering all rooms as much as possible every day. I still have a big mess in a couple of rooms, and even though I keep telling myself I'm going to work on it, I end up doing goal stuff instead. I had been working on my fiction books, I went through more than a third of the ones I knew I was keeping, and found lots of I felt I could get rid of. But then I remembered that I have a huge stack of books in my LR that I had never gone through, I just saved--and lots of them were books I thought I should keep. So since I'm putting the fiction books alphabetically by author, I thought it would be a good idea to start going through the huge stack to see how many were fiction books--no sense alphabetizing when I'd have to go back and add more. So today I've been working on the stack. I'm finding some fiction books I want to keep, but a lot more nonfiction, and that's my biggest category--I already have my storage full of nonfiction. Plus, it's reminding me how much work this is--book purging takes every bit of my energy, and it takes so long. I need to force myself to get things decluttered again--easier said than done. My fiction book purge consisted of 50 books (all ones I had planned to keep and read) and today's purge was 29 books (some I had been planning to read, some I had been planning to try to sell or trade). I'm going to go report on the 2014 items thread. Then I must figure out how to make myself declutter tomorrow. Diane
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Post by RoadRunner on May 26, 2014 21:23:53 GMT -5
I would love to join in here for the summer. It will be about 3 weeks before I really get up and rolling, as I need to finish the school year out. I will begin to make a list though. I still have areas of clutter but the living areas of our home are clutter free (most of the time). But I have several areas to focus on.
Roadrunner's (potential) Summer Goals Enjoy time with my family Finish Garage Declutter Finish upstairs bedroom and hallway Declutter Detail Van Detail Explorer Decorate House Declutter Attic Get digital files organized Organize Pictures Financial/Budget Refinish Table
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Post by dtesposito on May 26, 2014 22:13:22 GMT -5
Roadrunner! How great to see you here! I'm sure the last 3 weeks of school will go by quickly.
You have some great goals there--I will look forward to seeing what you can do this summer.
Diane
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Post by lucie on May 27, 2014 5:51:28 GMT -5
Diane, you are doing great job with your books! How many do you guess you own in total? P.S. I will have to join your purge, I brought some free books home recently and they are starting to spill out of book designated spaces.
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Post by ohblondie on May 27, 2014 9:01:54 GMT -5
Busy busy!!!!!! Daughter helped in the kitchen. Packed up pictures and my two display arwas. The shelf over the window and a small display shelf with tea cups and saucers. This week we will clear the clutter on the floor and around the island.
I also did massive work in the yard. Cleared out so much overgrown stuff from the garden. Probably 4-5 lawn bags full. I got several garden displays put together and most of my planting fone. Another good solid day and I will be done. It eill be as party ready as it can be. Still need to clear out the woodpile but at least it is neatly stacked in a rack.
Now to continue this focus on the inside.
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Post by MamaAngie on May 27, 2014 9:02:37 GMT -5
Been reading and catching up and very impressed with Diane and the others who have laid out plans for the summer. I am going to join once I get time to figure out what I want done. I want to work on the June Purge-a-thon so these threads should go together nicely.
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Post by sleepymom on May 27, 2014 10:54:13 GMT -5
Diane, that`s great that you`ve found books to cull in the stack you`d planned on keeping! I`m wondering, with the stack you hadn`t gone through, would it be worth just doing a quick sort to see how many you might be willing to give up without looking at them more thoroughly to weigh whether they`re more or less worthy of your limited space? You might find that some quantity of them you could make an immediate decision on giving them up, then you`d have less to look over more carefully at a later time. Speaking of books, we have a fairly large collection of SciFi/Fantasy. I`d collected a couple of series that I`m no longer interested in re-reading & would like to give up. One, I already had. Another lives on our main SciFi case, so I asked DH if he minded me getting rid of it, and of course he wants to keep it, just in case he ever wants it handy (I don`t know that he`s ever read it). Weighing the number of books each of us brought into the marriage & have personally collected, I`ll admit that more are mine, but he won`t let go of any of his. And what`s more frustrating, over the weekend he visited a friend who used to belong to a club that sent him SciFi/Fantasy books and is now downsizing his collection. DH brought home a box full of books we mostly already own! Including a couple from the series I want to get rid of. The duplicates are going out right away, I`m just On the longer term goals, we did meet at the bank last week to get our savings acct. set up. We have someone coming over Wed. to do some measuring & let us know how much it will be to replace the porch roof. DH wants to get that done before the gutters. We did some browsing at home improvement stores to talk about some other choices & projects on my list. He doesn`t like the color I want to paint the front room & supposed to do some thinking about what he would like so we can figure out a compromise. Painting the back entry way is on hold for now. He`s convinced there is rot behind the walls, that we need to rip them out & put up drywall. I`ll have to pull off a couple of boards & see what it looks like & figure out what to do from there. It may end up being a larger job than we can handle ourselves, so not going to do anything with it for the moment. Trying to figure out what I want to do for my next project.
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Post by dtesposito on May 27, 2014 13:16:27 GMT -5
Hi Angie! I'm glad you'll be setting some summer goals. And yes, the June purge-a-thon fits perfectly at the beginning, I need about a thousand things to throw away to get to 2014 items and since I'm counting papers, I might do my file cleanout during June--I'll bet I can finish up the 2014 items just in that month between file papers and hardware. Lucie, you are way ahead of me if you have designated book spaces and pretty much keep to them. Of course, I have designated books spaces too--but I also have UNdesignated books spaces everywhere! Ohblondie--did the window-to-door project happen? I thought it was set for Memorial Day weekend? Sleepymom, I guess my intention when starting looking at book mountain WAS to make it a quick sort--I was looking for fiction books, and was going to say yes or no. But, I'm finding more nonfiction that I want to keep, and rather than pile them back up on the stacks I figured I should start putting them in a box, then I found some books that I might want to sell, but I have to look them up first--so they're in a separate stack. Then, now that I've removed the top parts of a couple of stacks, I see that I have BOXES underneath the stacks, which I really hope means they were books I wanted to sell. If they're books I wanted to keep, and I wanted to keep them badly enough to neatly stack them in boxes, I'm in trouble. So I'm getting discouraged before I even got a good start on the mountain. Plus, I really, really have to do some decluttering next, so I'm trying to ignore the books for at least a few hours! I'm telling you, I'm just hopeless when it comes to books. Everything else I can handle getting rid of, but getting rid of a book I want to read feels like I'm missing out on a wonderful opportunity! Diane
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Post by ohblondie on May 27, 2014 14:00:11 GMT -5
Window to door was supposed to get done this weekend. Actually.... was supposed to happen today. The order went in late so it will be early next week before it gets installed. Good thing because hubby ended up in the hospital yesterday with a staph infection. Hopefully it will be a quick recovery so the prep work can be done. I am plugging away on stuff though.
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Post by dtesposito on May 27, 2014 14:45:39 GMT -5
hubby ended up in the hospital yesterday with a staph infection.Oh no! I hope he gets better soon! Diane
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