Five books out. I only read two of these entirely, the others I started and gave up on. No need for them to hang around the house when I’m not going to ever re-read them. As much as I love having books to read and books on our shelves, it does sometimes feel a bit of a waste to buy them when there’s a library down the road from us. I’m rarely the type of person that has to read a book as soon as it comes out, anyway.

Five lengths of fabric out of the craft closet. Two of them are leftovers from other projects (you can see a bit of that green/blue stripe in the background – I used it for curtains in the home office/craft room), the other three were meant for long ignored projects that I’ve decided I don’t care to try to do now. The lesson here is that I really should just buy for projects as I want and have time for them and then actually make whatever it is instead of buying with intention and then never actually doing it.

Coming back from vacation, I immediately set out to take advantage of my new-found motivation and start purging. I’ve done this before, but my binges end as quickly as they start. I just get burnt out and overwhelmed.

I want to document a bit the things I remove from my home. Is that weird? I think documenting might help to give me a good picture over time of how far I’ve come. I’m the type that likes seeing it on paper, with the final numbers tallied up.

I think the easiest thing to do is 5 items at a time, not only to make it easier on Goodwill drop offs (I’m much more likely to put one bag or a few items in my car to take than when I have a large amount at once to haul around) but also because a few things at a time prevents me from having melt downs over parting with them. 5 things seems small, at least for now. Slow and steady wins the race, yes?

First up: yarn. I have 4 skeins pictured, though I’ve removed 5 total so one isn’t pictured. These four came into work with me on Wednesday and were given to coworkers who can use them. They’re all leftover full balls from old projects except for that pink wool, which I received in a secret santa exchange one year. I could have held onto them and made something – hats, gloves, baby sweaters… But I’m trying to be honest with myself and realistic. I don’t need another hat, and gloves in these won’t match my coats. Baby sweaters are always fun to knit, but I’d rather pick out something special for that particular baby rather than just using something in my stash because it’s there.

The 5th skein not pictured went to the Goodwill.

I have no idea how long I’ll attempt to keep this up. I imagine at some point either ridding myself of 5 items will become more difficult, or I’ll end up at a point where I’m satisfied with that I’ve downsized and stop. We’ll see, I guess.