Do you ever stop one day and want to throw out almost everything you own?  I do.  I felt that urge this week. I recently started contract tutoring part time.  I have a AP U.S. History student and told him I would pull my personal notes for our session this week.  I put everything on a flash drive when I left my school.  It should be in an accesible place.  After dumping tons of boxes and containers, I can't find it.  So I resorted to plan B: the physical notes in the curriculum boxes buried under book boxes in the closet.  I opened the first of three boxes, no Chapter 4 folder.  Hmm... I found Chapter 5 and forward, but not 4.  I opened the second box, no luck.  I opened the third box, still no luck.  Then I remembered that in the move to Omaha a few of the folders were dumped.  I just shoved all those papers into box three and forgot about them.  I pulled probably close to 500 pieces of paper out and started to sort them.  After almost 30 minutes, I found my chapter 4 notes.

This adventure has me disgusted over how much crap is just lying around this house.  I want to clean house.  I want to simplify.  I want to purge.  I am making my new project purging the house...  My first attack point is my closet and jewelry boxes (yes boxes).  Tomorrow my plan is to try on every piece of clothing I own.  Anything that has no hope of ever fitting (trying to lose some weight) gets thrown in the donation pile.  Same goes for my jewelry.  Out of the boxes I have, I routinely wear 5-6 necklaces and about 3 rings.  I think I can get down to one small box.  No more shoe boxes full of jewelry.  I also plan on tackling my shoe issue.  As an added task, I will be pulling some of the clothes that will be traveling with me back to Indiana for Thanksgiving.  (I need to reassess my winter wardrobe, since we really don't have winter here in Sunnyvale)  All of this sounds like quite a project, but I really want to decrease the crap lying around.  We may not get down to the 100 item households I read about, but at least we will be able to find things quickly and without lots of sweat and swearing.

...

I spent almost two hours throwing every piece of clothing onto the bed and then sorting them.  It's piled up and and ugly.  I tried on every pair of pants.  Over half don't fit, but just barely. If I lose about 5 pounds, I get those pants back.  So I reorganized the closet to divide the can-wears from the can't-wears.  And I ended up with an entire garbage bag full of clothes that will be heading to the Goodwill.  It's not much, but I feel tons better with the purging and reorganization.

Next, I sorted through my shoes and found that there were only two pairs that I could give away.  To be fair, I did do a huge shoe purge before our move from Omaha.

Finally, I dumped the jewelry boxes.  Who knew they held so much?  I didn't at all.  

After an absolutely ridiculous amount time, I finally got all the necklaces untangled and everything sorted into piles.  Then I systematically went through and decided whether or not to keep each piece.  I think I routinely wear about 5 different necklaces.  However, many of the others I love and wear on occasion.  So I kept many of the necklaces.  The same goes for the rings.  I was a lot more choosey when it came to bracelets.  I only really like a few.  Most are too heavy and bulky for my tastes.  Many bracelets went into the get rid of pile.  I also sorted my pin box, the keepsake jewelry box (class ring, etc), and the random chainless pendants.  I finally got everything sorted and the keepers put back into the box.  I want to rehang all my necklaces so they don't tangle, but I need a better idea and the cork board I had in Omaha.  

Part 2...  the office, the most dreaded place in the house. (attack plan coming soon)