The tenth item is out of the apartment! Sam needed a digital tv converter and I am not using my tv, so he took it off my hands. Hurrah for meeting my weekly quota.

Week Three Purge: Inside the Desk

Zone: Inside the Desk

Well, I'd say that this project of simplicity is in some ways more challenging than I thought. I do have a habit of purging every once in awhile and apparently, I was more "bare-bones" inside my desk than I realized. Nonetheless, I found ten items I could get rid of:

1.  50-foot phone cord.  Who uses phone lines anymore? - free pile

2.  Citibank battery-operated calculator/clock I got for free at a conference.  It would be useful if there was a way to power it off.  As it is, it doesn't power off (because of the clock function I presume) without removing the battery.  I have several clocks and a mini solar-powered calculator that I've had since college.  So the Citibank chotcky can go bye-bye - free pile

3.  A pile of used batteries that need recycling.  We have two battery recycling buckets at the office (one for regular batteries; one for rechargeables); I just need to take them in - recycling

4.  "Heart John" button.  A left-behind item from Johnny who last subletted my apartment.  I kept it around for awhile in case he ever missed it and wanted it back.  It's been a year and a half; I'm assuming no.  Same goes for 5. "Fanny Floss" jokester butt floss and 6. pirate's eye cap.  - All three of Johnny's lovely left-behinds are going in the trash.

7.  APS film camera.  I kept it around - just in case - but haven't used a film camera in at least five years.  If I do decide to go to film, I will be using the 20+ year old Kodak manual camera my father dug out for me a month ago - free pile

8.  Luggage lock.  I lost the keys when I was in Korea.  It's useless  - trash

Speaking of keys, I have a baggie filled with random keys.  Here's one thing I wasn't able to do: get rid of any of them.  I can't get over the queasy feeling that I would be tossing something away important yet unknown...

9.  Pile of useless pens.  That's right - I went through dozens of pens and tested each one.  These are the ones that don't work and are just taking up space - trash

10.  Seafair King Neptune pin - Actually, I'm still on the fence on this one.  Uncle Bob Santos gave this to me the summer (2007) that he was Seafair King Nepture.  During a particularly difficult time when I was acting Executive Director at IDHA, he came over to the office and anointed me as a special Seafair honoree.  It really made my day, and tossing this item would likely toss away that memory - as I had forgotten it until the moment I started writing this post.

I might have to come up with eleven items next week.  Next zone: On top of the desk (including over the desk shelves).

Week Two Purge: The Secretary

Zone: Secretary

I did not have luck finding enough stuff in my secretary, mostly because it's filled with clothes (which I counted as one pile).  My next zone will be my desk, which I hope will last me at least two weeks.

1. Feather duster that I have had since I worked at Linens n Things in Lawrenceville, GA.  The feathers come off every time I use it now, so I would say that it's pretty much useless - trash.

2. One glove. I lost the other one a couple years ago, and I held onto the other glove thinking its mate would show up one day. It hasn't, and it's time to trash it.

3. Free poster from the 10th anniversary celebration game for Seattle Storm. Nice little souvenir, but I'll never hang it up - free pile.

4. New College souvenir football with the slogan: "NCF Football: Still Undefeated". That's funny because - well, New College is a hippie school. There's no football team to speak of - free pile, in case someone wants to toss the thing around for kicks.

5. Star Wars original trilogy VHS boxset (mentioned in the previous post) - free pile.

6. Phantom Menace VHS boxset. I purchased this one myself, but again it's useless without a VCR - free pile.

7. Pink watch that I purchased for 10,000W in a Korean subway station. The battery died, and honestly, it's "Korean cute". Not something I'd wear anyway - free pile.

8. Wooden massage thingy (mentioned in the previous post). I've had this since college, I believe - and probably haven't used it since then - free pile.

9. A handmade drawing of cans of peaches. In Korea, we had a Secret Santa gift exchange to be valued at no more than 5,000W (about five dollars). Alan wrote that I might be interested in "Canned peaches? Anything?" The person (a wonderful artist) gave me six canned peaches, and drew this lovely picture (of canned peaches, of course) on the inside of a cardboard box. It's got sentimental value, I suppose - except I didn't really know the person. He was on his way out when I came in. I've held onto the drawing for almost two years, and now it's ready to be recycled - recycling bin.

10. A small stack of tank tops and t-shirts. Cheap clothes I purchased in Asia because they were cute, but honestly don't look that great on me - free pile.

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In other news, I made another significant purchase that has added an item to my apartment. On Friday morning, my cat jumped onto the dining table where I had my laptop, work Blackberry, and the week-old cell phone handset. It also had a full cup of coffee. The coffee got knocked over, and my MacBook died within 10 seconds. Luckily the two phones survived.

So now I have a new ultra-cheap desktop computer (on which I'm writing this post). So plus one item to the apartment, sigh. It's a never-ending cycle, it seems.

Purging Stuff II

I can hardly wait until next weekend when I can get rid of ten more things. I know, I know. I don't have to wait a whole week, but what if I go nuts and then run out of things to purge before I've had a chance to concretize the habit?

(Yes, concretize is a word. My colleague and I actually looked it up on dictionary.com after she exclaimed, "I've never heard that word before! Did you make it up??")

I think I might try a zone process of purging. Kitchen cupboards, top of secretary, inside the secretary, desk, bookshelves, closet, random stuff I've stored under my bed...

This weekend's zone: ten things stored inside my secretary. Surely there are at least ten things in it that I can part with. I'm already eying a wooden hand massage thing-a-me-bopper. You'll have to wait until this weekend's post to see what I'm talking about.

Can I part with my VHS collection too? I have the entire THX VHS boxset for Star Wars. I love owning the first (or is it now last) three episodes of the trilogy, the sci-fi geek that I am. On the other hand, I don't have a working video cassette player anymore. At this point, it's just sentimentality that keeps me holding on.

I never likened myself as a particularly sentimental person, but I do appreciate that about ten years ago my dad asked me what I wanted for Christmas, bought it for me, and then even sat through about an hour of a film with me. Granted, he kept saying, "That's not real!" (Er, I guess the concept of sci-fi never hit it big in Korea.)

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And then along comes this podcast this morning (10/21): What Our Stuff Says About Us.