As any of you who have been reading this blog have probably figured out, my brain is cluttered with more useless crap than I can objectively measure. Predictably, my home - and especially my home office - and how I live are an unfortunate reflection of that phenomenon. Earlier this week, something in my head snapped. I am going to slay this clutter dragon now if it kills me.
It all started with this relatively innocuous post on LifeHacker about organizing instruction manuals. My “organization” of such things had stopped at the point where I at least had them all in one place, cluttering up a shelf on the unit next to my computer desk. I was watching TV the other night and decided to organize that pile even further. I was amazed - I had manuals/instruction sheets for all manner of crap, including some of Abby’s toys and a few things I didn’t even own any more. So I separated out two narrow categories that I wanted to keep - stuff that went with my power tools (because of the technical specs in them that can be useful when they break), which went into a stand-up file in the garage, and stuff that went with our appliances, which went into a dedicated notebook I have for the house. Everything else (which was about 80% of the original pile) I round-filed without a second thought. It’s a small thing, but it’s so liberating, I can’t even describe it.
I’m publishing my other organizational goals here so ya’ll can hold my feet to the fire. As an initial matter, there are two major areas I need to get control over - my home office, and my basement. (My garage is in pretty good shape already, for those who are curious.)
My goals for the home office:
- Separate CDs into two piles - “keep” and “sell”.
- Sell the “sell” pile at a used CD store and use the proceeds to buy a couple of CD albums and maybe a cheap portable hard drive.
- Rip the “keep” pile into iTunes, then back up the digital library to the hard drive.
- File the “keep” CDs and their jackets into albums. I know some people who got this far would probably think about selling the now-useless CDs, but that’s stealing. Jewel boxes will be donated to my office, where we’re busily converting old paper files into PDF archives.
- I will probably sell some used DVDs, not sure yet. I don’t have many so this isn’t that big a concern for me.
- Get rid of every not-eBay-able, not-useful book I have that I don’t really, REALLY want to save. I have a feeling this is going to be a bigger pile than I realize. I’m going to sell them at a local used book store just to get rid of the headache, even though I know there are probably other ways to get more money for these books.
- If there’s something that even the book store won’t take (I have several textbooks that probably fit this description), they go into a box and directly to the East Cobb Public Library. They can throw them away if they want, but I’m taking the write-off.
- Donna has a bunch (two shelves full) of notes from college she doesn’t want to throw out. I’m going to scan them all to PDF for her, and if she still doesn’t want to throw them out, they may wind up packed away instead of on display in the office.
- Random, not-used-but-still-perfectly-good computer shit has been piling up in my office for years. All of it will be eBayed, and soon.
- Buy a good paper shredder. Ours is a piece of crap.
For the basement:
- We have a treadmill and a recumbent bike that simply are not being used. Those will be eBayed without delay, should be several hundred dollars there.
- Cassette tapes may be eBayable, not sure yet.
- VHS tapes will definitely be eBayed.
- We have two VCRs. One of them will be eBayed for sure, but Donna doesn’t want me to get rid of the only means we have of playing our wedding video (and those of her siblings). In the meantime I’m looking into means of converting those to DVD, since I don’t trust tapes to be terribly long-lasting.
- I have a “memory box” that I haven’t opened in at least ten years. I don’t have my brother’s particular brand of OCD that would allow me to perfectly organize everything I might find in there, but I would like to scan whatever is worth saving and get rid of the paper, if possible. Unclutterer has an interesting idea about getting rid of physical shit that we all have that for whatever reason we don’t want to either get rid of or actually display, and that’s something I might consider for some of this stuff, too.
I’ll post updates and additions to the list as I go.