Mid-week uncluttering

[fred_mouse]

How goes the uncluttering, this fine Wednesday?

I've managed to find yet another source of paper that should already have been thrown out - the filing cabinet. Today, I discovered a folder of primary school newsletters, dating back who knows how many years (I didn't look, I just checked that the whole folder was newsletters and chucked the lot). I've pulled three other files out to go through, and I suspect that several others could be thinned as well. Possibly, by the end of this I'll be able to fit all the extra bits of paper in the cabinet!

Comments

[tanaqui]

I swear paper replicates when we're not looking....

I took four books to the book donation bin yesterday. One was a book I'd read recently and decided not to keep. The other three were books I'd read a long time ago and enjoyed, but realized -- on scanning my bookshelves -- I wasn't ever going to re-read.

I'm planning on going through my bookshelves to see if I can find any more of those, and also to put together a pile for next year's read-10-minutes-a-day project. (So far this year, I've managed to read at least 10 non-fiction books like that and donated about half of them.)

[peaceful_sands]

Well done on the book progress - setting aside time to read is a great idea.

[fred_mouse]

I like the idea of a 10-minutes a day project for paper books! I've been doing something similar for 'classics' using Serial Reader, but there are lots of books on my shelves that would be much easier to deal with if I just committed the small amount of time, rather than trying to push myself harder than that. *eyes off the shelf of technical books to read someday*

[tanaqui]

It's surprisingly effective! I originally started so I could make myself work through a big pile of magazines that I wanted to read but which I... somehow never got around to reading....

When I got through the magazine stash, I realized I'd been really enjoying spending those 10 minutes a day sitting quietly and acquiring knowledge in a low-pressure way. Rather than, you know, spending 10 minutes pointlessly refreshing the internet and reading rubbish. So I started applying it to the many unread books I have which don't fit on my bookshelves.

Now, I usually read while I'm eating lunch, which generally takes a bit longer than 10 minutes, and stop when I reach a convenient point like a section break. And because I read pretty much every day, I generally don't lose the thread of what I'm reading, even though I'm only reading a few pages at a time.

[fred_mouse]

I have been inspired to pull a book out and put it on the bedside table. It is one that I've read bits of for uni years ago, but never actually read all of, and it is something in my field that I should know backwards and forwards. Later, I'll have a look at reading it.