Operation Cleanup

If all goes according to plan, when I get home from work today, there will be a dumpster in my driveway.

It will be there for two weeks, and it kicks off a flurry of cleaning and purging that will hopefully result in a much more organized and less cluttered house.

I am already thinking about process changes I can make to keep it clean once it gets to that state.
Recently, I’ve been doing “zero inbox” on my email, which means I deal with all emails in my inbox, either deleting them, archiving them or replying and then archiving them. The idea is by keeping your inbox clean, it’s easy to see new stuff, and by dealing with it as it comes in, it never gets overwhelming.
So far it’s working really well. I’ve been doing it at work and at home, and my email boxes are clean and tidy. If I need to find an old email, I just use search, or filter based on some simple tags.

I’m thinking I could do the same thing with physical mail as well. I could move the shredder and the filing cabinets out of my bedroom, and when mail comes, either shred it, file it, or if it’s a bill, pay it and file the receipt – immediately. That way I won’t even let paper into my bedroom, since once it gets there, it just builds up in huge drifts.

The dumpster will allow us to throw out some old crappy furniture which has just built up and is taking up space.

I also might convince myself to part with some packratted stuff…

I need to go through my clothes, and decide for each item if it needs to be tossed, donated, or filed as winter or summer or all-weather. My closet and hamper are overflowing with clothes, I definitely can do some paring down.

And gadgets… I have a bunch of old gadgets built up. One laptop is garbage, a 486 that I don’t even think I could give away. Then there are two other laptops, a Dell Inspiron and an Apple Powerbook… they are old, and need new batteries, but work fine… I never use them, I should give them away or eBay them. I also have an old Palm IIIx, for which I have just about every accessory made. Seriously, I have the little digital camera attachment, and the GPS attachment, and a bunch of other stuff… I doubt it’s worth much. Again, I should give it away or sell it. It’s hard to do, though. Every fiber of my being tells me “keep them, they are old but still work – if there’s an apocalypse, they might come in handy…” But they are just taking up space, and it’s time to pare down.

Heh, as I type this, I’m listening to the new They Might Be Giants CD, and the song “Climbing the walls” is playing, which has this lyric:

Too much junk
Too much junk
Can we please clear out this house
In the trunk
In the trunk
And then we’ll take it all to the dump