Organizing 101 (an online class from Aby Garvey)

There is no doubt in my mind that I am an organized individual; color coded closet and sock drawer, alphabetized stamp pads, categorized books...you get the picture.  My problem is the amount of "stuff" I have managed to accumulate over the years and my inability to let things go.  I am pretty sure I have jumped that hurdle now and am clearing things out!  I've realized that it is not the "things" in my life that make it important or give it value, it is the people, the feelings, the way I feel about myself.  If I choose to keep an item for sentimental reasons, it will be showcased to represent how important it is, otherwise I will take a photo of said item and it goes into an album that I am creating!  OK, so with all that out there, I am continuing my de-cluttering process!  I began back in December before this class began and it is going very well, I had most of what I wanted to deal with tackled prior to the first class!  We had to pick a project for the duration of the class and I chose our entertainment center and enlisted the help of Sean and Em (since it is a collection of all our things!):

Here is the entire entertainment center and looking at it, it doesn't seem bad at all...until I looked at each shelf and all of the movies (some we've never watched), the magazines that I've saved for 7 years because I love one article or story they contain...and the dust (I claim to be organized...not clean!!):

 I started on the right side with movies and my magazines, here is before:

 and here is after!  The movies were pretty easy to sort through and what we chose not to keep we took to the library.  My magazines took a bit longer to go through but I cleared out 4 magazine files!

I have been hanging on to all of these issues of Diabetes Forecast since 2005...for one simple thing, each issue has on the last page a story, "Reflections" from a diabetic's perspective or their parent, their child, their spouse, or their friend and most often when I read them I am crying in the end.  No matter how much my family or friends tries to understand or support me, as a Type 1 diabetic, I often feel alone with my disease. It feels so good to read these stories and know that other people are going through the same or very similar things.  So I pulled each story out, 3 hole punched them and stuck them in a cute little folder:

 Then the magazines went into the Recycle bin and man did it feel good to do that!  I stopped my subscription a few years ago and have missed reading those stories but I just found that I can get them online for FREE!!!  I'm very excited about that!

I emptied 4 magazine files, donated about 20 DVD's and actually have empty shelves now!  I dusted and am ready to move on to the next section!  It will be the left side where Emily's books, some toys and her albums reside!  Stay tuned!!