Decluttering little by little

I put my Xbox and Xbox games up on craigslist. $50 for the full system, three controllers, and nine games. The Xbox 360 plays some original Xbox games but not all. I was surprised that it read "Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy" because it wasn't very popular (although quite fun) but really surprised that it didn't read "Deus Ex: Invisible War" because that was a high-profile game that got great reviews (and is one of my favorite games of all time. It's got an intelligent story AND it gives you the option of playing through without having to actually to kill any enemies. This is actually the much harder option, by the way. You can try to sneak by them and hope they don't come after you or knock out them out with a tranquilizer gun (after you find it) and hope you can run fast or hide until the tranq. takes effect. It makes for very tense encounters.)

I'm getting rid of the system because I never play it anymore (and am seriously thinking of getting rid of the Playstation2 for the same reason) but I have the same feeling now as I did when I got rid of the VHS. I kept the VHS for much longer than I probably needed to because I had a lot of things on VHS that I'd never be able to see again, like the great travelogue of La Paz Oscar made for me when he visited his family right after we started dating. And the Tick cartoon episodes that Oscar taped (My favorite quote from the series is when the Tick says to the supervillian du jour: "You can't blow up the Earth! That's where I keep my stuff!").

It's almost worth keeping the system just to be able to play "Deus Ex: Invisible War" or "Otogi: Myth of Demons" sometime in the future. I love both these games.

I also realized I have far more beer bottles than I need at this point so I put a notice on Freecycle. Not that I'm too worried about those. If no one wants them, they go into the recycling bin on Thursday. Anyone need four dozen 12oz. amber beer bottles, suitable for bottle conditioning?

 

in which Oscar discovers the secret to my decluttering strategy

Him: "Why did you put all my stuff into the garage?"

in which I reveal my grand ambition

My plan for this weekend is to actually turn the spare room into functional space. I have put this off for a long time (basically since we moved into the house 18 months ago) and I'm tired of it. The key to a pleasant life in a small house is organization. Both Oscar and I suffer from clutteritis, and both of us have made halfhearted attempts at some sort of organization, usually when an area gets too out of control even for us. Unfortunately, at that point, any change is a vast improvement so nothing ever gets to a really good state.

Here's what it looks like now:



I've got a good start because the shelves have been put up. (Thank you Oscar!) And really all that needs to be done is some organization. There are two large boxes of Important Papers that need to be filed (yes, there is a two drawer filing cabinet tucked in the back). Getting that done will clear up a lot of stuff off my desk (the table to the left).

On the left is a freezer taking up the entire closet (not large to begin with). Yes, there is a freezer in the closet. It came with the house and we need to get rid of it. I was using it as yarn storage (go ahead and laugh if you want, but it was perfectly fine storage space since the thing isn't even plugged in) but now I just want it gone because I want the closet to be used for real storage--like the tools that are right now just kind of laying on the floor.

Wish me luck.