The great purge of '06

So Nancy and I decided to put our house on the market. Well, in order to put the best foot forward with those people who are walking through our home we decided we needed to "declutter". Declutter is a 4-letter word for homeowners. George Carlin said it best:

So when you get right down it it, your house is nothing more than a place to keep your stuff...while you go out and get...more stuff. 'Cause that's what this country is all about. Tryin' to get more stuff. Stuff you don't want, stuff you don't need, stuff that's poorly made, stuff that's overpriced. Even stuff you can't afford! Gotta keep on gettin' more stuff. Otherwise someone else might wind up with more stuff. Can't let that happen. Gotta have the most stuff.

So you keep getting' more and more stuff, and puttin' it in different places. In the closets, in the attic, in the basement, in the garage. And there might even be some stuff you left at your parents' house: baseball cards, comic books, photographs, souvenirs. Actually, your parents threw that stuff out long ago.

So now you have a houseful of stuff. And, even though you might like your house, you gotta move. Gotta get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff! And that means you gotta move all your stuff. Or maybe, put some of your stuff in storage. Storage! Image that. There's a whole industry based on keepin' an eye on other people's stuff.

I am by far the worst pack rat on the planet. Correction, I'm the second worst pack rat on the planet. My dad is the worst. He inherited the designation from his father when he passed away.

I digress.....

Nancy and I spent 4 days working on our "decluttering". Of those 4 days, most of one day was spent cleaning up the flower beds with some new mulch and weeding. The other 3 days was spent "decluttering" my office. Nancy took care of the rest of the house. I had stuff everywhere. There was stuff crammed into the file cabinet, I had stuff in boxes in the closet. Most of my stuff was paper related stuff. We ended up filling seven 13-gallon garbage bags with confetti from the shredder before giving up and we weren't even half way through the stack of paper that needed to be shredded. I was shredding bank statements going back 13 years.

There were a few bits of history uncovered. I found a "letter of intent" from a job I was offered 10 years ago. I have come a long way in 10 years. To think I thought 15,000/year was a lot of money back then. When I got that letter I thought I was going to be rich.

Boy did I throw alot of stuff away. I was pretty proud of myself. I felt like I was on an episode of Clean Sweep.

Needless to say, my office is unrecognizable. It's actually useable.

After the 4 days were done, our house looks awesome. I hope that we can keep it up