Why Is It So Hard.....

 ....to declutter?

One good thing about moving is having the chance to sort out stuff and throw away things that are no longer used or needed.

I've been doing the hundreds, if not thousands of books we have.  We have books for teaching, those were easy to throw away. Some were so old and so out of date that they confused the kids! I had one book teaching "How Many?" using everyday objects like pens, pencils, erasers, etc. One object was cassette tapes, I spent half the lesson on this asking the kid "How many" and getting him to answer "There are 4 cassette tapes.", then changing roles.  At the end of the lesson he asked, in Japanese, what are cassette tapes?  I was surprised that he had never seen a cassette tape, CD, or even a DVD.  Books like that were easy to throw away. There's a recycle place that takes books and scrap paper to reuse the paper. We've taken maybe 30 or 40 big boxes there.

A lot of books were from when the kids were little. Bit harder to deal with but a friend of mine took a lot. She is Japanese but has a foreign husband and they are raising their kids to be bilingual. She also knows other families that might benefit from the books.  That was easy to do. I've kept a few, the book I read to Hannah every day she was in the hospital, or a favorite book of the boys.  

Other books that are harder to deal with are ones I've bought over the years. These are taking a bit longer. Also, everybody has a lot of books, 200 or 300 each, maybe more. We really are a book family!

Yesterday I wanted to start sorting my clothes. This is where I'm having problems. Hannah suggested that I throw away anything that I haven't worn for a year. But it's difficult when the clothes are still wearable.  I took out six pieces yesterday, threw out 5, and put one back.  I realized that some of the clothes I've had for years, maybe 20 years or more. Why am I keeping them?  Part of it is worrying that I won't be able to buy things again.  Being big means that it was difficult to get nice things here.  But that isn't true anymore, there are catalogs and of course internet shopping! Got to get rid of my old thinking!

This is the next problem. I asked Mikey to bring a couple of the big plastic drawers from the other house, he bought six over. They are so big and in the way. If we had a chance to go this week I wouldn't mind but between work schedules and the typhoon, I think it'll be another week before we go

Plastic boxes!

The sad thing is that there are about 50 of these boxes, they were full of unused clothes!!