Cleaning Out Clutter and Cleaning Up

I've been absent from this blog for a few days as I've been de-cluttering, cleaning, enjoying the company of friends, etc.

Just an update.

I filled up 5 large black contractor bags of garbage Friday night, yup five bags. One bag was nothing but paper (and yes I dumped the paper in the paper recycling bin at the town transfer station). One was old rags,towels, etc (gave those to my mechanic he uses them as dip stick rags), one was clothes to go to Goodwill, one medium sized bag of clothes to go to the consignment shop and one was trash.

It barely made a dent in my possessions, barely, Not Good. I have to go back through my things again this weekend. I'm having separation anxiety with some of my possessions.

The upside is my desk is back to being a desk and not a level flat surface in which to place papers. I did spend some time sorting out receipts and tax information and filed all the piles of paper that had accumulated on my desk.

I started a new and easier filing system. I have a small file cabinet that holds the major files such as all my insurance files (home, car, medical), anything relating to the house, etc. I used to have a file for each credit card, each utility, etc. And I used to color code the files by type and year. Sick I know. I have consolidated all my files into 4 folders 1) Utilities-gas, electric, phones 2) Mortgage and Bank Statements 3) Insurance-home, car, medical 4) Anything else-student loan and misc. Yup 4 folders instead of the multitudes I had before. I will probably add one more file for any recipe ts I need for tax purposes. All in one file box sitting under my desk. I'm going to look into a scanner this year and will seriously consider scanning all my paper statements quarterly and filing on a disc. I don't do well with e-statements. I need to have a piece of paper in my hand to pay my bills, the problem is what to do with the paper once it's no longer needed. I have to find the link to the post, I stole this idea from another blogger and modified it for my own use.

I bought a new small canister vacuum cleaner at K-Mart (more on my major slip in shopping habits later), the Shop Vac I bought as a new vacuum cleaner spews just as much dust as it takes in, not a good or smart purchase. I spent early New Years Eve vacuuming my house and washing my floors. I do have to say, ringing in the New Year with really clean floors was kinda nice. I ran over to the neighbors house for a celebratory drink at 9:30 PM, and I was home and in bed by 11:30 PM (I'm such a lightweight now a days, ).

I will post later or tomorrow about my major slip up in shopping. Lets just say that the clouds of depression, too much snow, not finding my TV, not enough sun, doubts in myself, etc really got to me late on Monday and I started to spend money and giving half arsed reasons to myself to justify the spending. Yikes, I don't need a slip up/regression at this point. What a way to start the New Year.