Anti-Hoarding Day, Redux

So I purged. A little. The task was too huge to complete in one day.

For openers, my room contained 6 Parade magazines (straight into recycling), 4 Psychology Today magazines (into a box for Maryanne to take with her on an upcoming trip to see relatives in Germany who will be interested in them), 8 issues and 5 magazine-length inserts from Prevention (into a box for a neighbor to take to the waiting room at the hospital where she works)--and 41 Men's Health magazines.

FORTY-ONE!!

When exactly did I think I was going to get to those?!?

So I pulled out the magazine that had Gerard Butler on the cover, then packed up a large stack for the same neighbor, carried the box over to her house, and stuck it in front of her door. I still have a sizable pile left. I just couldn't carry that much. Besides, the rest of the Men's Health magazines have Celiac Disease magazines piled on top of them. Sigh. Forgot about those.

My dustbuster nearly gave up the ghost, cleaning up the areas where those magazines had been.

And all those magazines were getting in the way of what I really wanted to read: the new novel Anthill by E.O. Wilson.

And then there was the newspaper pile. I'd forgotten about the newspaper pile! A few weeks ago, when I wasn't feeling well, I took a pile of newspapers to my room to read on my bed. Just the good stuff. I have a system with the newspaper. First, I sift out all the junk, like the ads and the Sports section. Then I read the front page and local news sections, usually during breakfast. Then I “save” the good section. Style. Comics. Dear Abby. Health news. Recipes. All the fun stuff. It's my favorite section. Sadly, often I don't get back to it. So then I end up with a pile of my favorite sections, unread! … I do the same thing with food. I save the best-looking piece of pizza for last. By the time I get to it, I'm already full. But in the case of pizza, I eat it anyway!

I also removed seven overdue library books from my room (hey! they might have contained useful information!) and piled them by the front door. They'll go back tomorrow when I take Cathy to karate; the library is right next door. That leaves only two more overdue library books. Well, that and the seven I had to check out in Maryanne's name since my account was on hold because of all the overdue books. But I still need those! I mostly got them so I could figure out what to feed my freshly-minted vegan.

On other fronts, I spoke with three separate neighbors about taking in the handsome young Italian man. (Okay, so I don't actually know that he's young or handsome, but I'm letting my imagination wander.) No luck.