The First Boxes
I finally got back to my apartment over the weekend. Walking in the door was actually horrifying - the amount of unnecessary stuff I have really hit me. I’m sure all the recycling stacked by my entryway didn’t help since I hadn’t gotten all the shipping boxes from my Christmas shopping out of the way yet. Even still, my apartment is jam-packed with things, and as I stared at them, I couldn’t think of a single reason why I should hold onto them.
You might be thinking at this point that I’m going to be an extreme minimalist that fits everything they own into a suitcase. I’m not and I won’t be. Even without my dogs, who would absolutely protest getting shoved into a bag, I still have a lot of things that provide meaningful value to my life. The kind of minimalist I’m going to be is one that fits comfortably into about 250 square feet of space. A 40-foot skoolie is just about that, depending on the type of bus I get, so that’s my current goal.
Instead of going all out in a single area, I decided to work slowly through both of my upstairs rooms. I live in a townhome-style apartment, so I have two bedrooms upstairs, one of which I converted to my home office, and then all of my living space and kitchen are downstairs.
The first thing to tackle in my bedroom: clothes.
I wrote in one of my earlier posts about some of the things that I want to keep, but I didn’t get anywhere close to that point yet. Rather, I went through the copious amount of clothes (or at least most of them) and tried to whittle them down by practicing Kondo’s sparking joy method. Essentially, I stood with each article of clothing and tried to feel whether it brought me joy. If it did, I folded it carefully and placed it in my bureau for consideration later, and if it didn’t then I thanked it and put it in a pile on the floor.
Honestly, the size of the pile at the end of the day was surprising. There were so many clothes that haven’t fit in a long time, aren’t comfortable, or just don’t make me feel anything at all. I took a few of the Amazon boxes that I’d gotten in the mail and folded the top of the pile neatly into two of them. All that’s left is to print the labels I requested from ThredUp and get them picked up by USPS. If you haven’t heard of ThredUp, I absolutely recommend it. You can send them your clothes and they’ll go through the hassle of sorting everything and selling it in their online thrift store. Anything they can’t sell or that no one buys after a certain time on the market, they can donate for you, and anything that sells gives you a small amount that you can reimburse through PayPal or gift cards. Check them out here if you’re interested.
The first order of business in my office: books.
I don’t just have a lot of books. I adore books, and I have been collecting them for the last decade. I have three full-sized bookcases, plus a few other cabinets in my office that are stuffed with books of every shape, size, and topic. There are definitely some that I am going to hold onto since books bring me a lot of joy and fulfillment. The main thing for me in my library of sorts is to limit the excess - I want to look at my books and see only my favorites and a few choice unread options. I’ve collected so many books that have attracted my attention that I’ve discovered they’re actually giving me more anxiety than joy. Looking at shelf upon shelf of books that I haven’t read is disheartening, especially when I read the majority of my books through Kindle when I’m traveling.
Back to my books, I tried not to think too hard about what I might want to keep. I immediately started putting all of the titles, authors, and ISBNs into a spreadsheet on my computer. Then I went through these two websites: https://www.sellbackyourbook.com/ and https://www.ziffit.com/ to see what they were willing to take. Both of these sites will give you a little bit back and then provide shipping to their facilities. Faced with the alternative of getting nothing for the whole collection, I was very interested in trying to give myself opportunities to get a little bit back for everything I wanted to let go of. I managed to fill two packing boxes with books to ship out over the course of the day, though it was a bit disappointing that at least a third of the books I went through couldn’t be sold to either website.
Now, all that’s left is printing out all the packing slips and shipping labels for the four boxes I packed up, two of clothes, and two of books, so that I can get them picked up by USPS. I already feel a little lighter and more positive, and there’s only more to go through from here.