Waste not, want not

I have made some major progress on my decluttering efforts this past two weeks. It does feel good to have back the space and to have some idea where to find things.

I couldn't sleep one night last week and worked on it for several hours. And I wrote some notes about what I was thinking while I was doing it because I was having such interesting (to me) thoughts and I wanted to remember them. I was using paper because I couldn't get on the computer. I guess I should get my own computer. One day.

I wrote in a previous post about pencils. Well I thought of a possible place for my pencil overload - I could give them to families with school kids. I guess most even low income people can afford to buy pencils in this country but it could be blessing all the same.

I don't like to throw useful things away just because I don't want to store them. It just seems wasteful. One of my roommates in the dorm in college used to sweep up pennies and throw them away with the dirt. I believe she even deliberately dropped pennies on the floor just because she knew it would annoy me. When I could I would pick them up before she could sweep them. The saying "a penny saved is a penny earned" didn't have any sway with her. I guess I can see the other side, that it isn't worth worrying about trivia, but still ... I'm not likely to become a penny or pencil thrower-awayer.

Now that I have been doing some organizing I won't need to accumulate any more unnecessary pencils because of the reason that I can't find one. I'm not sure if that is why I have so many.

And I think all those pencils actually were taking up too much room in my house. I had cans and boxes full. The boxes in drawers, the cans on shelves - space I can now use for other stuff that needs to be put up. I still need to work on other stuff. I have been neglecting it for so long it will take some time to get through it, like clearing out a plot that's become overgrown.

So as to the pencils, in the cause of donating my excess, I pulled out some unsharpened ones to donate to a thrift shop. I'm thinking that I could donate the sharpened ones too, what's the difference? And the short ones, I think the library could use them... Stop the pencil waste people! :)

I found out about a place online where you can post stuff you want and stuff you want to get rid of. It's called freecycle. It didn't seem worthwhile to post pencils.

I also helped my brother find a place for an unused refrigerator in his basement. That happened because I went into the hamburger place next to the thrift/flea market place. The lady who took my order asked if I had seen a refrigerator in there. She ended getting the refrigerator.

The lady was Chinese which was exciting to me - I love talking to Asians. I had no idea when I went in there that the place was owned by a Chinese couple. In Hawaii I knew lots of Asians and I miss that.

I really enjoyed eating there too, a genuine old-fashioned hamburger joint. The neighborhood is now all low income housing (projects), and I felt kind of like I was in a foreign country. It's not the kind of place I would go generally. I have been missing out.