Stuff That I Don't Need, Stuff that I don't even REMEMBER

I'm sure my friends are loving the title of this post. If you have ever participated in one of my surprisingly frequent moves in any way, you understand that I am thisclosethisclose to being on Hoarders. I am extremely sentimental about my stuff. I find it mostly interesting, entertaining, and I like my stuff. But I am aware that over the last few years it has gotten out of hand, and I think Matt definitely thinks it's gotten out of hand, and I should stop. But I guess it didn't really get bad until this summer when we began to prepare our house for moving. It was bad. Really bad. We started packing up all this stuff, and then it was suggested we move it to a storage unit. Which I happen to already have. So we drove the stuff up, opened up my unit and it was...horrific. For both of us to realize that the storage unit was already full of a good amount of my crap from when I had moved back from Wilmington, and stuff from when I had moved from Chapel Hill to Wilmington, and I am wondering if it's possible there's stuff in there from my move from NYC to Chapel Hill. But we packed up half our house, and moved it into storage and put our house on the market and sold it, and then moved into a tiny apartment, where we realized our stuff that had been left unpacked was STILL TOO MUCH STUFF. So we moved some of that stuff up to storage too. And still there are boxes are around that need to be DEALT WITH. Much easier said than done. But I think what brought it home for me this week was losing my thank you notes. I wrote thank you notes from Christmas, and I have misplaced them all. This comes from a total lack of organization. That comes from having so much stuff we are disorganized, overwhelmed and I am unable to find anything. In a 900 sq ft apartment there resides a pile of thank yous that need to be mailed. Then, my friend Sarah Kahn posted a blogpost from this site called raptitude.com. Link: http://www.raptitude.com/2011/01/i-dont-want-stuff-any-more-only-things/ He writes this beautiful, poetic diatribe about getting rid of stuff, about being able to really enjoy his things because he got rid of his stuff. Matt's sister-in-law is also really good at getting rid of stuff. It is a talent I have yet to obtain. I always believe that part of it is genetic or something. There are people who are just born more minimally than others. Tell me about your favorite toys. If you only had ONE true favorite, and that was the only memento you kept from your childhood, you are good at this. I have a friend who came to college with her really beat up cabbage patch doll- I mean really beat up, I think her brothers had taken a hammer to the head or something, and that was it. She also lives in a tiny apartment (and will laugh when she reads this post) with a husband and a baby. When I say tiny I'm going to be generous and say 500 sq ft. Also, I used to follow Apartment Therapy religiously. Without taking much action. So anyway, being in this apartment, surrounded by boxes, I am now determined to be better at this. So, every day, I'm picking out things that i don't really use or even really want, and I am putting them in a box, or in my chair at my desk. Box = giveaway, Chair = ebay. Maybe someone else can get some use out of them. How do you handle your stuff?

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