I know I've said before that buying more space for your stuff is really not a solution. It's just a way to store and hide more stuff you don't need. But there's certainly a limit to that. Sometimes a bookshelf really IS a solution to books that are otherwise building up on the floor. SOMETIMES, the clutter solution is just putting things back where they belong.
A wade through my living room had me discovering the following items:
- Sheet music. No less than 8 of these books lying around, along with 3 vintage sheets and a few photocopied pages. I'm not surprised that Don Aslett wrote a little section about sheet music in Clutter's Last Stand. These go into my little cabinet with the rest of the sheet music.
- Vacation stuff. Airfare tickets, brochures, and all that crap. Some of it has apparently been lying in corners of my room for over a year or two. These things either get filed with the rest of my vacation stuff (they do come in handy with new trips) or thrown out.
- Old article print-outs. Things either photocopied from magazines or printed from the web. If I read it, and I'm done with it, and I can still find it on-line or printed in a book, then there's no point in keeping it. One of these was a 1999 article my old boss gave me regarding the impact of (brace yourself!) high-speed internet in households! OK, I got my nostalgic chuckle. Time to chuck this thing.
- Teenage Stories. Wow, speaking of nostalgia! When I was around 13 or 14, I wrote a number of stories. Tasteless, pure indulgent, juvenile, first-person, fantasy fiction. Laced with anarchy. I was inspired by similar writings my friends were doing. Maybe I should post some excerpts or read them on my radio show. Then again, maybe they're so ridiculous that I can't believe I wrote them. I'll take a read.
- More papers. Car maintenance receipts. Computer equipment receipts. Jury duty stuff. I have files for these things. In they go.
- Books on the floor. I may just need a separate blog entry on dealing with these.
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