Seven-ish years ago, Kevin and I lived in a three bedroom apartment.

Then we got engaged and moved to a one bedroom apartment.

Then we moved 5,000 miles away to Hawai’i.

Shockingly, a lot of our stuff ended up in storage.Once we bought our shiny new house, alllllll that stuff in storage came to live with us.  And holy cheesenips was there a lot of it.  Did you know we had two crystal punch bowls?  I didn’t.

Since we’ve decided that homeownership is not for us, we’ve decided to use the time we’re here to parse down everything we own (SO MUCH STUFF).
The first pass through was easy.  It turned out that I didn’t actually like a lot of the stuff I owned.  Boardgames I don’t enjoy playing?  Gone.  Clothes that don’t actually fit?  Gone.  Books I hate?  Gone.  (That one was actually a little complicated emotionally, but I felt pretty good at the end of it.)

But even after we got rid of everything we didn’t actually like (a literal garageful, y’all) we still had way too much stuff.  But we like everything left!  What do we do?

I asked Kevin, and he doesn’t remember how we got this idea either, but Wave Two of Operation Get Rid of Junk is based on a slightly complex idea.

If we won’t miss a thing after it leaves, then we get rid of it.

This is SO MUCH HARDER to enact, y’all.  But it seems to be working okay.  There are a couple steps to take to make it happen.

1. Identify the thing you will not miss.
2. Tell Kevin what it is.  (Or Bess, if you are in fact Kevin.)
3. When you are conveniently elsewhere, have your cleaning buddy remove said item.
4. Profit!

Of course, this is a much slower method than just happily chucking things into boxes for Goodwill, but at least it’s progress.

Anyone else out there working on clearing out your junk?  What sneaky methods do you use?  Let me know- we can use the help!

P.S.  Started transcribing my book two ideas to Scrivener today!