The SIL hopes I am making progress in sorting and preparing to get rid of things. Hard to say. While moving things in the garage in hopes of someday being able to put the car in it, I discovered 6 boxes of LP's, only one that could be considered mine. I must go through them, and then see if I can borrow a machine that makes CD's of LP's. Don't talk MP3 to me. I have an ancient boom box that still plays tapes and CD's, and I know how to use it.
Sewing projects that have been limping toward completion for months and years are marginally closer. The sewing machine has refused 3 times to make a buttonhole on the jeans, or they'd be finished. I've discovered possessions I haven't seen for years and cannot bear to part with. I have the same number of boxes in the basement but some are half empty. I've begun destashing patterns for doll clothes and soft toys and am trying to make sense of how to list them for sale in various places. I can stand to get rid of some needlework books from the 70s, but there is no market for them. Sigh.
I still have more paperback fiction than I have bookcase space. My solution to sleepless nights is to find good reads that I've already read, read about 30 pages and fall asleep. This does not work with new-to-me books. I know I have to get rid of books. Some I will never find again, and must keep. Some I reread on a yearly basis. Gotta hang onto them. I guess I can get rid of things that are currently on most library shelves, and easy to find at 2nd hand bookstores. I guess. Some reference books were so hard to find and acquire that the idea of donating them to Planned Parenthood's annual book sale causes physical pain. Better to sell these, I think.
I know I've taken things to Goodwill. Each time I go, I take a minimum of 3 overstuffed trash bags of things that could be used and sometimes boxes of trashy books as well. A couple of charities make a point of asking for donations and making it easy by picking up things set on the porch and marked with their initials. I've been locating items from a craft stash dumped on me 10 years ago when a couple left Dayton, and giving it back to them now that they are back in town.
It sounds like progress, but it doesn't look like it. There's room for the car in the garage, but not enough to open a door and get out of the car. Every room has keep/sell/giveaway boxes and overflowing trash cans. And new stuff still oozes into my life.
Longtime resident neighbors are moving out, and insist on giving me bits and pieces when I help, and it's fabric and trims, and I am incapable of refusing. There's curiosity, you see. What are other people throwing away? And there's acquisitive lust: that kind of fabric has not been produced since the 1960's. I have collected bits of vintage fabric for years, planning to use it in reproduction clothing for vintage dolls. And I do use it. Just not at the same rate I collect it.
Longtime resident neighbors are moving out, and insist on giving me bits and pieces when I help, and it's fabric and trims, and I am incapable of refusing. There's curiosity, you see. What are other people throwing away? And there's acquisitive lust: that kind of fabric has not been produced since the 1960's. I have collected bits of vintage fabric for years, planning to use it in reproduction clothing for vintage dolls. And I do use it. Just not at the same rate I collect it.
