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A few weeks ago I read this article about cleaning out the clutter from your life, both figuratively and literally, and it suggested a monthly purge of 9 things.  Take 9 things you don’t use (or rarely use or are tired of using) and donate them, throw them away, burn them, run them over with your car, drop them in the ocean, or whatever other method you choose to remove them from your life.

Don’t do any of those last three… burning things is illegal, running them over with your car can wreck your car, and the ocean one is just pollution.  Give a hoot.

woodsy

Anyway, I can’t find the article anymore and I don’t remember why 9 was the magic number, but it stuck in my head (so apparently it was magic) so today, since I was feeling a bit better, I decided to do that for my Differently.

BTW, better, in this case is definitely relative.  I seem to have moved from the debilitating pain portion of shingles to the severe discomfort portion, which probably qualifies as “better” although it is stretching the definition of the word rather thin, I believe.  I did feel good enough to warrant an expedition out of the apartment, a lovely change of pace over the rather monastic life I have been living the last week.

So I hobbled around my house and picked out my 9 things.  They were:

  1. A suitcase that had seen better days
  2. A bag of clothes (which I counted as 1 thing)
  3. A pair of speakers (ditto)
  4. A set of headphones that I won at a Christmas party raffle
  5. A phone/clock/alarm thing that was very 1993
  6. A CD/radio thing that was very 2004
  7. A pre-Blu-Ray/wireless DVD player that was very 2007
  8. A stuffed animal that came with some flowers from work when I was recovering from my cancer surgery
  9. A pair of lampshades that were brand new that didn’t fit the lamps I have but I was too lazy to take them back so that sat in my closet for 4 months (eventually I bought a different pair of lampshades and THOSE didn’t fit either but I was going to be damned if I was going to let those rot, so I went and bought new lamps to fit the new lampshades)

I took it all to the new Out of the Closet Thrift Store that opened up just down the street from me recently and booyah – I feel 9 things lighter, for whatever that’s worth.