The Work Continues

I made further progress with the Great Box Reduction Project today, though not quite the progress I had intended. There was a pile of about 6 boxes that were supposed to go out to the New Shed (you remember the New Shed, don't you?), but it was raining all day.

Rain is relatively rare here in Dodge, so I chose not to track mud all over the house while taking boxes out. Instead, I let the dogs do all the mud-tracking. And they did it with enthusiasm.

I did sort through some more boxes today, partly because the Drama Queen was looking for something and there was a faint possibilty that it was in one of the boxes in my bedroom. No luck with that, but the pile is somewhat reduced, as you can see:

I also carried 14 empty banker's boxes downstairs. Actually, I threw them down the stairs, but since they are inanimate objects there were no complaints. Unlike the time I threw one of the cats UP the stairs. By her tail.

But that's another story.

So here's where the empty boxes were. More of the floor is visible now:

And though it may not look like it, I carried four boxes of papers down the stairs so that I could go through them while watching the first season of Stargate Atlantis on DVD. I only finished going through two of the four boxes, but that's okay because there is still a lot of Stargate Atlantis to see. Quite a lot of the contents of the first box were of the "whyever did we keep these?" variety -- receipts, empty envelopes, and bills from around the time of our move to Dodge 6 years ago. But there were also some things I really should file, like the booklets that came with all our appliances.

The contents of the second box were mostly papers and other things from the 5 years that I worked with the youth group at my synagogue. I gave that up last year because I was frustrated by the lack of support from the synagogue, the community, and the parents. This was not an easy box to go through because I still have some bad feelings about the whole situation. In the end, I decided to recycle the vast majority of the papers and officer manuals and flyers and other stuff because, honestly, I don't think there is any point in saving them against the possibility of the youth group reviving. So my two overflowing boxes of papers sorted down to this:

The box in front is the few youth group things that I am sending back to the synagogue -- a havdallah set and some financial records. The other box is about half unused papers and folders and things and the other half is those appliance manuals and a few receipts for work we had done on this house. I won't inflict on you a picture of the bag of papers waiting to be recycled.

In other news, I managed not to clutter up the balcony today:

Of course, it was raining most of the day (that's why the rug is wet) so it really wasn't worth going out there anyway.