A box, a bag, a shelf, or a pile

That's my goal -- to go through a box, a bag, a shelf, or a pile every day, allowing time off for Shabbat and holidays, and general cussedness. I even made a little song of it, to the tune of "Money Makes the World Go 'Round" from Cabaret:

A box, a bag, a shelf, or a pile
Though it may stretch as high as a mile....

That's as far as I have gotten. Maybe more will come to me as I go along.

So right above this is a picture of today's box. It is actually sort of left over from yesterday, but since today is a holiday of sorts, I'm going with it. And here are the contents all spread out:

What is all that STUFF? Besides being the "good" STUFF left after going through a couple of bags and boxes of things taken off the shelves near my computer, that is. The papers, recycling (14 used ink jet cartridges!) and trash have already been dealt with. So here we have:

• a small framed print bought at the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans, taken down from the wall when we put in the new pantry cabinets
  
• a roll of white duct tape
• a strap from an unknown bag
• a leather drawstring purse with Israeli coins
• a hand-held Tetris game, still in the package
• an assortment of CDs with family pictures, promotional videos, music, and what-all.
• an empty case that could hold CDs or DVDs
• a back scratcher
• a small red box that once held a piece of jewelry that one of my sisters made for me
• pet pockets -- little pockets that go on dog collars to hold their tags, along with the tags that should be in the pockets and on the dogs; only two, though, which leaves one dog pocket-less until I can order one for him
  
• open packets of tissues and cough drops and some hand lotion, probably taken from my tallit bag when it suffered an unfortunate encounter with a can of tuna and needed to be cleaned
• a small Mag-lite flashlight; an even smaller Mag-lite flashlight still in the package, and a take-apart key chain, also still in the package
• a pile of assorted notebooks and pads and Post-It notes
• 2 AA batteries
• remote control for a CD player (which I cannot find) and another remote for a DVD player (which I also cannot locate); misplacing the DVD player is more of a puzzle than misplacing the CD player, which probably died and went to the trash
• a very small brush for cleaning out nectar ports in a hummingbird feeder
• a lint roller
• a little bag that was originally a badge holder for a convention I attended two years ago, but which now also holds name tags from a bunch of other conventions I have attended
• a pink highlighter pen
• a little blue tag that describes the Wizard's car, which was probably attached to the keys when we bought the car about 8 years ago
• a red plastic chile pepper light cover (should have made that a Mystery Object and see if anyone could guess what it was)
  
• a Lego piece dug up in the back yard by one of the dogs sometime over the past year or so
• a bunch of envelopes for recycling used ink cartridges and having some money go to Petsmart Charities in the process
• a receipt for some mylar book jackets bought off the internet a few months ago
• a card sent by one of my sisters with 3 photographs that I keep meaning to scan so that I can use them with my screen saver photo show
• some twister ties (don't know why these weren't trash yesterday, but I'm going for brutal honesty)
• an Everlasting Treat dog ball without any treats in it
• 2 red desk baskets with a blue bag in them; the blue bag holds 4 small presents that I bought last year to give to the graduating seniors in my youth group, but none of them showed up for an end-of-year event (except Future Vet, and he doesn't count because he lives with me ... or he did at that time)

There's also an orange-and-white cat in the background, but I am pretty sure that the Sports Nut would be really unhappy if I did something with one of his cats.

I started on this box early this morning. Most of these things got put away, a few got thrown away, and a very few (like those orphaned remote controls) were put into a box of "Things That Are Looking For Other Things" because, you know, as soon as I threw them away and the garbage truck rolled out of sight, the corresponding Thing would turn up.

The Drama Queen has shown up to do her laundry (mom's house is still cheaper than a laundro-mat). So far I've made her go through a pile of STUFF that she left behind. She thinks she's done, but.... there are three more boxes of her STUFF out in the garage and I'm going to go get them right now and make her sort through them.