Aiiiie.

[holyschist]

Hi, I'm a packrat with too many hobbies...and I might be moving temporarily for work soon and am hence trying to clean/organize/sort through/declutter ALL the things ASAP so a) I will be able to easily and efficiently pack for a year in another town, b) leave my partner in a tidy, organized apartment not covered with my stuff. It is sort of daunting, although I am making pretty good headway (I am afraid I may not be able to work fast enough, though).

My biggest long-term problems are books (which I am getting better about--I got rid of 20 or so books the other day for store credit which will only buy 2 books, and have generally become much pickier about buying books--there is empty space on some of our bookshelves now!) and craft supplies, so once I finish the marathon my goal for this year will be to destash--primarily by sewing a lot, because the fabric takes up more net space than anything but books.

I'm not really aiming for minimalism, but I would like to craft more with what I have, buy fewer supplies, and I would like to have only stuff I love and use regularly, and not too much stuff for our living space.

I'm pretty good at getting rid of stuff, except for all kinds of weird sticking points. I absolutely hate throwing things away--recycling or donating is fine--but then I run into stuff like the entire office box of half-used notebooks I accumulated through college and grad school. Should I just toss most of them and start over, now that I no longer buy four pristine notebooks a semester and can probably do fine with three total notebooks? What do y'all think?

ETA: I actually ripped out the used pages a while back, so what I have is a giant stack of blank half-notebooks, which could probably be more productively replaced by three new notebooks...I guess I'd better suck it up and recycle the collection. Erk. Thanks for the moral support!

Comments

[iliketea]

I called my local recycling place a month or so ago and confirmed they will recycle books as long as the covers are ripped off. Perhaps yours will as well. (I haaaaate getting rid of books by recycling them, but they're really quite ratty from over-reading.)

I would get rid of the notebooks via recycling.

[holyschist]

This is not yet a concern--I am ridiculously careful with my books and haven't yet worn out any to the point where they are not at least thrift-store-worthy.

[finch]

It depends on what info you have in the notebooks and whether you think you need any of it. Most of my college notebooks just went into the recycling bin at university, because after the final, I didn't need them. Some of them had useful information that I copied into other places or kept a few pages and scanned, then recycled the notebooks. If you have a notebook that's entirely composed of useful info that you'll refer to later, keep it.

[holyschist]

At some point I actually went through and ripped out all the used pages--so what I have are a bunch of blank half-notebooks. Which I could use...or I could rip the spiral rings out and recycle the pages and buy a smaller number of brand-new notebooks that I can ensure are entirely composed of useful information.

It's just...challenging...to get rid of perfectly usable paper, but it's a lot of half-notebooks.

[finch]

Have you actually used them up to this point? If you actually are pulling them out and using them, there's no problem in keeping them to use up. If you're choosing new notebooks in better shape - and I can't blame you if you are - it's time to recycle them.

[holyschist]

Hmmm. The answer to that is probably "sometimes". Part of the reason I have so many is...I lose notebooks in the chaos. On the other hand, most of them have been living in a relatively easy-to-access box, so....I'd better recycle them.

[msilverstar]

I have the same problem with trashing stuff, but it's probably better in the dump than in our houses...

[holyschist]

Yeah, I guess....

[beachlass]

I think that voice in the back of our heads saying "BUT, I can still USE this!" can really get in the way of letting things go.

Welcome, and good luck! (I still love that icon, btw)

[holyschist]

For sure! My mom is one of those people who saves all kinds of weird things--paper towel tubes, for example. Some of it she does use efficiently, like food containers (meticulously sorted by size). Others just sit there (like the paper towel tubes, which I occasionally used for crafts as a kid...but I'm 26 and haven't lived with her in 9 years). So I definitely picked up some of that "I can USE this...someday!" mentality growing up.

(Thanks!)

[adair]

Throw them away, which means put them in the recycle bin. You use notebooks for class, you don't seem to ever fill a notebook used for a class, you've ripped out the used pages (think carefully about whether you need to keep all that used paper). What do you use notebooks for now? If for a journal, get one journal notebook. If for notes on various topics get a loose-leaf notebook where you can add or delete pages as needed. You can use those thick pages with labels to organize topics withing the loose-leaf notebook.

I've been where you are; letting go of written material is hard enough. Keeping unused paper 'in case' is a false economy. You'll waste more time and energy moving it around, and trying to decide which partly used notebook to use, and making space for the box ----it's all too much. Toss them.

[holyschist]

I did fill notebooks for class sometimes, which is why I always bought new ones (didn't like having one class split over multiple notebooks)--the problem was that I could never tell in advance which classes would generate large amounts of notes. Anyway, that is all blessedly in the past now.

(I did recycle all the used pages already.)

Keeping unused paper 'in case' is a false economy. You'll waste more time and energy moving it around, and trying to decide which partly used notebook to use, and making space for the box ----it's all too much.

Good argument! I am convinced. Away they go tomorrow. :-)