Friday, March 21st, 2008

Spring Cleaning . . . or not

posted by lizzie    « 7 Comments »    tied to Uncategorized   

I thought Spring Break would be a great time to do some Spring cleaning, especially since we aren’t getting out much this week (Simon is doing much better today, but his nose is still running like a river). Today my focus is our iTunes and my clothes.

We have 25 days of music/books/podcasts in our iTunes. That is 30.58 gigs. Most of the music is from Micah’s days sailing the high seas of file sharing, when he would grab any music he could from the network his apartment complex was on. We don’t listen to a lot of it, and we don’t know what a lot of it is. We have gone through it before and thinned it out a bit (I think we used to have 29 days worth). But for some reason no matter how much I feel like just tossing everything, once I sit down at the computer and try to figure out what is worth holding onto and what is not, a little voice in my head starts saying things like, “Well, maybe someday you’ll learn to salsa dance, and then you’ll want this Latin music so you can practice in the living room sometimes.” Or, “Maybe if you have this German music playing sometimes, Simon will pick up on German and then he will be really smart.” Ha! As if the boy could be any smarter. Also, as if I want to listen to German music when we have 23 days worth of English music. Or, “I hate Ace of Bass and don’t care if I ever hear ‘All that She Wants’ ever again . . . but ‘The Sign’ is so junior high dance-ish that how could I possibly trash it?” It’s ridiculous and I know it.

And then there is the clothing issue. I am not somebody who really likes to shop. I don’t have a lot of clothes. I threw a bunch of clothes overboard when we moved to Hawaii, threw some more overboard when we were in Utah (things that had been in storage, like winter clothes), and then as soon as we got to New York I realized I still had a some clothes that I held onto, not because I liked them but because I couldn’t bear to part with any more. Of course, I haven’t found a use for them since, and they are now sitting in a pile of things to be given away. Now that I’ve cleaned things out several times, I find that most of what I have left are t-shirts with sentimental value (my marathon shirt, shirts Micah designed for the PCC) but that I only wear to bed because they are a little big for my normal style. It’s a shame we didn’t budget for a Spring Fashion shopping spree. Looks like I’ll be wearing the same five shirts over and over again for the next year.

At least it makes getting dressed in the morning a little easier.

Comments

  1. Age says:
    March 21, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    I understand. We’ve dropped our collection down to 5.5 day and it only took 3 years to do it.

  2. Bente says:
    March 22, 2008 at 1:39 am

    Moving so many times and being limited on space (especially in the laundry room), I finally told the kids that they could have 10 outfits each (plus Sunday clothes) and the rest was out of here! It is amazing, they still are clothed and even though we still do 2-3 loads of laundry a day, I don’t feel as if I’m swimming in clothes. Plus, they actually wear what is in their drawers.

  3. The Richards says:
    March 22, 2008 at 5:29 am

    I’ve been meaning to clear out iTunes as well – fun times, right? And as far as clothes go, it’s amazing how attached (sentimentally) to a shirt or to pants that I never wear I can become! I totally agree about shopping, I avoid it whenever possible.

  4. Stephanie J. Robertson says:
    March 22, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    i know the peep challenge deadline is today and i have five boxes of peeps anxiously awaiting my creative juices on the counter. one of bunnies and four of chicks. just know, it would have been a rock show scene, it would have been cute, but not that clever. maybe it will still happen…

    i am mostly excited to see the others! when i saw meg’s comment i got all excited because i knew she would come up with something awesome!

  5. lizzie says:
    March 23, 2008 at 6:43 pm

    Oh, Stephanie, just fyi, it’s a different Meg than the Meg you are thinking of. I hope your Peeps are put to good use, even if they aren’t featured in the contest.

  6. Stephanie J. Robertson says:
    March 24, 2008 at 6:00 am

    they are in my tummy = very very good use! i love the entries!!! so awesome!

  7. heather says:
    March 24, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    I’m making a t-shirt quilt out of all my sentimental-but-too-big t-shirts. That way, I cut out the logo and turn the other 2/3 of the t-shirt into rags (which I throw away after cleaning the toilet instead of washing!)And I’ll have a nice cozy blanket at the end of it

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