40 Bags in 40 Days: Days 22 and 23

I might have to change the title of my own personal take on this challenge to 40 Bags in...er...More Than 40 Days ;-) I lost steam on this project for about a week, but like I said, even if I don't do the 40 days consecutively, I still fully intend to do 40 of them!

Day 22 was YET MORE WORK ON THE DIGITAL PICTURES.  God, I have so many pictures.  My problem is, I take tons and tons and tons of pictures, but unlike Eamon, I don't edit them as I go (he's a smart guy).  And then I upload ALL. THE. PICTURES to my computer and they just SIT THERE languishing, the good with the bad, the wheat with the chaff, the blurry with the perfectly-in-focus, the best version of that gorgeous view with the 87 okay versions of that gorgeous view that I took just to be sure I really got the very best version I could get.  The thing is, you can't always tell from the back of a camera whether you got a good shot - it's easier and clearer on a computer screen.  Well, I can find a justification for everything.  It's a problem.  I guess you could call it digital image hoarding??  Is there a support group for people like me??

"Hi, my name is Sarah, and I keep every picture I've ever taken."

"Hi, Sarah."      

I really enjoy documenting important (and, okay, even not-so-important) stuff in my life.  That funny sign on the side of the road, the honeymoon Eamon and I finally took after 5 years of marriage, my baby's first teeth (side note: she is remarkably defiant about letting me get a good shot of them...and yet I soldier on).  I take these pictures because I want to remember things.  Of course, Eamon would say that you should try to live in the moment more, and that taking a picture manufactures a memory for you by superimposing a fixed image over the organic one your brain stores away (and also can't give you smells, sounds, ambience, etc).  This was the guy who was adamant that we not have a videographer at our wedding because he didn't want just their version of the experience to be what was captured and replayed over and over again.  I had to work to convince him to hire a photographer!    

Anyway...whew.  I had a lot to get off my chest about that!  Moving right along!

Day 23 I FINALLY tackled my desk and the file drawer/storage/printer, and now I can actually say that my desk area is tidy! I took the "before" picture of my cluttered desk...I don't even know how long ago - and I waited to post about this until I really, really had a good "after" I was happy with. But now the desk and the file drawer/printer surfaces are both visible!! I had so many things I wanted to scan for safekeeping just piling up, and not only did I put away/recycle/get rid of a bunch of stuff, the scanning projects are done too!! Now, what's *inside* the file drawer is going to be a whole other ballgame - I'm sure I will have bags and bags and BAGS of papers to shred/recycle, which will be very cleansing and cathartic in its own right. It's going to require quite a bit of time, and Bug's naps range anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half lately, so I might get to one or two hanging files per nap. We shall see.

Desk and file drawer before

Desk and file drawer after

                        

Perhaps the best "side effect" of all this decluttering, which others who are participating in the Facebook group have mentioned but hadn't really sunk in for me, is that once I've decluttered an area, I actually find myself making the effort to keep it that way.  It's like, now I know how good these spaces can look, and I have an ideal to uphold and aspire to.  It's really changed how I see my living spaces.  Suddenly a pile of random crap on the dining room table is UNACCEPTABLE!!  That's kind of shocking for me, but I'm not going to fight it.    

40 Bags in 40 Days: Days 18, 19, 20 and 21

Yup.  You've probably noticed that I seem to be compressing more and more into each blog post.  I'll admit that I haven't been working on this project every single day, but I am still determined to do (at least!) 40 days total, and I'm already more than halfway there, so I really think I can see this through.

Days 18, 19 and 20 were all the same thing, which means that it actually makes sense to put them all in one blog post!  So there.  I have a VAST backlog of digital photographs on my computer that not only need extensive weeding (do I really need that blurry picture of my cats when there are four THOUSAND better ones??) but also need to be much better organized.  As I was going through them, I noticed that groups of pictures from various times in my life and places I've lived were all scattered throughout the big "My Pictures" file.  Even just creating meta-folders for "Life in Boston," "Life in Hawai'i" and "Life in Washington" made for a much more streamlined and less overwhelming collection.  There are some folders, obviously, that can stand alone, but that was a good place to start.  And because I only really have small windows of time when I can do any of this stuff (thank you, 6-month-old baby whose naps are a complete mystery right now) I just kept with it for a few days straight.  Momentum is a good thing.

Day 21, I undertook the small but satisfying job of decluttering the hall closet.  I tidied and came away with two bags to donate - scarves and hats I no longer wear, plus a nice suit jacket (doesn't fit anymore and the matching slacks are long gone), as well as three pairs of shoes.  I also hung up three baby carriers that had been living on the backs of chairs in the dining room.  Quick, but worth it!

Cluttered hall closet

         

Clean hall closet

                

Two bags to Goodwill!