Matt's Blog

The purge continues, but with less vigor than before. I hope I can keep up the enthusiasm all year. I suspect it will go in fits and spurts. Everytime I open a cabinet and have mountains of crap fall down on me, everytime I sit down at the computer and have to move piles out of my way, evertime I wade through the garage, I will be inspired to continue.

This week I took on a junk drawer (one of many) and three kitchen cabinets. I found food that has been here since we moved (about 6 years ago). Of particular note were some dried apricots the color of death. This week I have promised to clear the computer clutter refered to above.

With a bag full of papers to sort and grade, I'm finding great motivation to do other things. So this afternoon I tackled the hall closet. Here are my findings, give or take.

20 hats (5 to Will, 5 to Maly, 1 for Grandma, 4 Adrian hats to school and 6 to Goodwill)
1 hula dancer (was to sneak it into Mike's back car window, but that's never going to happen--going to put it on my desk at school)
2 camera tripods (both old, one probably an antique, anyone want it?)
4 bags of vacuum bags
2 books
1 video cassette (my brother the attorney in a classroom courtroom suing somebody about scaffolding--they say scaffolding so many times I really should sell copies of this as a drinking game, every time you hear "scaffolding" chugalug)
1 dvd
1 violin in need of repair
6 bags of stuff (some to return to Target or Home Depot, some full of stuff to take to one person or another)
4 umbrellas
1 guitar
1 Spiderman guitar strap
1 rack full of coats (including 2 sports coats that are too small for Maly much less Will)

If anything appears in these purge updates with the words goodwill or anyone-want-it next to it, come by and pick it up if you're interested, or send me 15-bucks postage and handling and I'll mail it to you.

Somehow I have amassed a large number of socks, more than will comfortably fit in my sock drawer. (I like my socks to be comfortable.) How many socks does a person need? I will be asking myself that question many times during the great purge of 2006. I have decided to go with a rule of 10. This will work well with clothes as it gives me two weeks worth. We'll see how it works for other items. Anyway, this morning I'm down to 10 pair of dress socks (including some I got for Chirstmas - sweet!) and 10 pair of white socks. This doesn't include the socks I'm wearing or any that might be in the laundry system, but I can't spend time tracking down such details if I'm going to document this process here. I also pulled out a few pair of old undies. The socks are going to goodwill. The undies to the trash. I can't picture someone else wearing my old undies.

Bufe at church mentioned to me the other Sunday, Christmas I think, that the blog had been inactive recently. Very inactive. It's true. One of my New Year's resolutions is, as always, to keep up better with the blog. I'm looking to put up a post a day, on average. So some of them will obviously be lame. Take this one for example.

One thing I hope to do on this blog this year is to document one of my other resolutions, the great purge. Our life is cluttered. Too much stuff! I am made aware of this daily, but the Christmas season brings this into even clearer focus for me. So this year, room by room, closet by closet, drawer by drawer, things are going to go. What's the adage? If it's not useful (and used), beautiful (and looked at/listened to), or meaningful, it's going out. Well that's the plan.

I started with my game collection. I decided that I would get it under 100 games. I know that sounds like a ridiculously high number to most, but I'm a bit of a game geek, and it's all I really collect. And it turns out, this part of the purge was actually pretty easy. I took the kids games off my list--doesn't seem fair that those should count against me--and that was that. My collection is now at 98, even with the new games acquired this Christmas. And that includes games that are in Mare and my classrooms, which really shouldn't be on the list at all as far as I'm concerned.

Here's the list: Click here for Matt's big list o' games.

A number of these are on the trade pile, although I don't know too many people that want them. But even counting those and the classroom games, I've still got a little wiggle room to pick something up at the thrift store if I see it.