Category: discarding by the bag

This bag about to leave your house might be better off as a big plastic garbage rather than a paper grocery bag.

Go through your extra blankets, pillows, and sheets. Put the ones you haven't used in the last year in the bag.

Now check the winter coats, scarves, gloves, sweaters, rainboots, etc. Add any of those you haven't used in the last year.

Now take the bag down to the homeless shelter or another local charity.

How would you like to have 52 grocery bags worth of clutter gone from your house? You can do it.

Here's the first one. Set up a double-bagged grocery bag (it'll be heavy…) and head for the bookshelves. Fill the bag if you can with the following:

– reference, technical and travel guide books which are now out-of-date (Tip: if no
computer in your house is running that version of that software, you do
not need a book about it)

– books you haven't opened in 5 years and which you don't feel like reading within the next month

– books which you bought intending to read, but still haven't gotten to several years later and don't want to start this month

– books you didn't like

– books someone gave you that you don't want to read

– books for a hobby you no longer have

– cookbooks for foods you don't eat anymore

As you take books off the shelf make sure they don't have anything important tucked inside them and that if they're inscribed to you, the inscription and source don't have the emotional pull to make this worth keeping.

Remember: putting the books in the bag does not remove them from the universe. If you later decide you want to read one of them, odds are very good that the local library or used bookstore will have a copy. Maybe even this copy.

Now, what do you do with this bag once you fill it up? You can take it to a used bookstore that buys or trades books and possibly turn it into cash or books you actually want. If you're having a yard sale soon you could sell the books. Or you can just drop them (or at least the ones that didn't sell) off as a donation to the library or charity. Just get that bag out of your house. Bag number one, done.