The pleasures of having company who cart things away when they leave

Today I had a friend and her children over for lunch. I really enjoy having them around. Her kids are bright and fun. It reminds me of the days when my own kids were running around, without the hassle of worrying about whether they are going to hurt themselves or break something.

Here, it doesn't matter if anything gets broken. I figure that's just one less thing we have to give away, throw away, or move. Not that anything got broken today. I'm just saying.

Anyway, despite spending the afternoon sitting around and chatting, I still managed to get rid of STUFF. The kids and I went upstairs and dug around in boxes for a while. We found markers of all kinds, workbooks and mazes, an astounding assortment of stickers, various kinds of paper, bookmarks and cups to decorate, and snacks left over from my youth group days. I loaded them down with glee and waved happily as they drove off. And I didn't even feel particularly guilty about loading down another family with STUFF, as everything they took was basically consumable. Except maybe the toy mice and the silly putty.

There were so many unopened boxes of markers that I still have half a box to give to a Freecycle acquaintance:


Those should go out tomorrow along with a couple of other boxes of recyclable objects and crafts supplies that I bought for the youth group, my religious school class, or the family education series I tried to hold a few years ago.

This morning before my company arrived, I finished the three boxes that I had pulled out two days ago. (See? I am aware that I didn't post last night. I was planning to, but the dogs were causing a ruckus outside so I let them in. And once they were inside, they got antsy because I wanted to work at my desk rather than giving them their good-night treats and going to bed.)

As I believe I wrote the other day, one of the boxes was basically just STUFF that needed to be put away. Another one had a variety of things, many of them left behind by the Drama Queen, that had to be disposed of -- I gave a few things away, threw some things away, and left some for the DQ to deal with on her next visit (A trend develops.)

The last box, however, was full of papers that I had cleared out of the Drama Queen's room when she moved out last September. Quite a lot of it was papers that needed to be shredded, which is why I hadn't already thrown them away. But as I went through the box... wow... unopened bank statements, unopened credit card statements, Netflix envelopes, all kinds of communications from her university, tax returns for the past 3 years. Look at all this:


I understand that the DQ does most of her banking and bill-paying online, but why not at least open the statements?

Whatever.

Here's the final result. One empty box, except for a mysterious piece of wood that went in the trash. If it's a thing looking for another thing, it's out of luck:


And three pile of papers -- the ones on the left are to recycle, the ones on the right are to shred and the pile at the back are the ones I kept for the DQ to file. This is not the complete pile, of course. Some were already recycled, shredded, or moved to the box of things I'm saving for the DQ to go through. (I saved her tax returns, for example.)


I shredded and recycled (the recycling guys are probably speculating on what kind of evidence we are destroying by this point):


And today, the Wizard and I instituted a New Box! We already have the Things Looking for Other Things box:


The biggest thing in there is actually my purse. Sports Nut wanted to know what it was looking for, so I told him it was looking for money. Since he was looking for my purse to take money out of it, it seemed like a fair answer. To his credit, though, he was looking for money so he could go to the store and buy a crucial ingredient for the dinner he prepared tonight. It's hard to make lentils and rice without any rice.

But I digress. Our new box is the "Things to Save for the Next House" box.


As we get further along in this de-crapification quest, we are finding some items that we love and want to have around, but that we don't want to bother putting up in this house, since we want to get the hell out of Dodge. As of today, this new box contains 3 items:


Two, you will note, are dragons. The doorbell dragon isn't going up here because it would involve massive rewiring. The current doorbell, which rings at random intervals throughout the day and night and almost never when someone is actually at the front door, is wireless. We intended to put the green dragon up on a wall somewhere, but have decided to just wait for another house. And the bell with the hummingbird is a fond memory of when our kids were little. In our previous house, we rang that bell to call everybody to supper -- or occasionally, for other conferences.

On top of all that -- the three boxes I brought down two days ago, the stuff I unloaded on my friend's children, and the things that are going to be Freecycled, I also made some progress on the cat bed for Sports Nut's cats:


It should be done and ready to felt by the end of the week. And in a less visible area of clutter, I am continuing to whip my iTunes files into shape. All in all, I'm satisfied with the progress made over the last two days.