Thursday Thirteen

Today I offer up a list of things I have thrown out in the last few months:

1. Socks and underwear. I dumped all of my white socks and all of my husband's white socks and replaced them with completely new socks. I did the same thing for my husband's underwear. It is the best way I know to ensure that he is not wearing threadbare clothes.

2. Teas. I had lying about the house a huge number of teas that I could not drink because they had caffeine in them. Many of these were gifts I had received last Christmas, and they were still quite good. I gave them to the postal service when it had a food drive in May. I was glad they would not be wasted.

3. The idea that I can't finish anything. I had it in my head that I could not finish long-term projects, or stick with something to completion. After coming up with a very long list to negate that idea, I decided it was an old notion that I needed to throw out. I have found, unfortunately, that such embedded ideas sometimes need to be thrown out again and again, as they return to the closet of the brain much like that ragged shirt of my husband's keeps finding its way back onto a coat hanger.

4. Computer and software manuals. I had every manual for every computer I had ever owned, apparently, because generally I can't resale the computers because I use them up. Finally I threw many of those manuals into the recycling bin.

5. Pillows. I have trouble with my pillows on the bed in that my neck gets crooked quite easily. I am like the princess and the pea - if things aren't just right I know it. So sometimes I go through pillows with alarming regularity. Somehow I had managed to collect 11 old bed pillows in one of the closets. I suppose I thought I might recycle them somehow. Failing that, I sent them all to the landfill. What a lot of space that freed up.

6. Plastic grocery bags. I use canvas totes when I shop but somehow still end up with plastic bags. I do not get as many as I once did but even so they still find their way home with me, wrapped around meats or used to separate frozen foods. I collect them and use them in trash cans in the bathrooms but they do pile up. I hauled a bunch to the grocery store, where they have a little collection bin specifically for these bags.

7. Old cards. I had a large assortment of cards that had yellowed and which I knew I would not send to anyone. I recycled them.

8. Tax records. I am a paper pack rat and up until recently I could have told you what we ate back in 1983, when we first married, by pulling out the grocery receipts. I threw some of that stuff away and some of it I moved to the attic.

9. Computer hardware. Two printers and a few other items found their way to Goodwill a while back. Computer stuff is really difficult to dispose of, isn't it?

10. 10,000 images from my hard drive. I went through and hit the delete key on a lot of pictures recently. I had about 27,000 on the computer and it was getting difficult to keep up with them. Who needs 14 pictures of the same flower anyway?

11. Wallpaper. I recently ripped all the wallpaper off the walls in the kitchen and repainted. It was a relief although I still find myself looking for the wallpaper and being alarmed by the plain painted walls. Hopefully I will get over that.

12. Old spices. I had a spice rack that my brother gave me sometime in the early 1990s. The spices that I had not used were still in their original bottles and still sitting in the spice rack. The other day I threw every single one into the trash. There was some satisfaction in hearing the clink of the jars as they landed next to one another. I also cleaned out my cabinet where I kept other spices and tossed everything that was out of date.

13. Old DVDs and VHS tapes. We had several VHS tapes and a few DVDS that I knew we would never watch again that went into the trash bin. We actually still have a VHS player that I use sometimes to tape a TV show, but so infrequently that I wouldn't miss it if were not available. I can't remember when we last watched a VHS tape. The DVDs that I threw away were some that were scratched and so I knew we would not watch those again, either.


Thursday Thirteen is played by many bloggers. You can see more lists here. This is my 149th time to play.