One of my resolutions/goals for the year is “Continue to simplify.” I love to read books and blogs about people living in tiny houses and apartments, on getting rid of the extraneous things in your life, about de-cluttering….it all sounds so fresh and exciting. In practice, it’s really…hard.

I have a confession to make:  I have pack-rat tendencies. I get it naturally. My dad keeps everything. No lie. And my grandmother, his mom…. before she moved into an assisted living place, she probably had every butter tub she ever bought. True story. So it’s not like I learned this on my own. I had an example.

Sigh.

But it’s a habit I’m trying to break. And since I should be moving into an apartment in a couple of months, I’m trying to start the de-cluttering now. Let’s just say I’m working on a really big donation pile for Goodwill.

Sunday I tackled my bedside table.

Here’s the before:

I tackled the mess.  Questioned every item’s existence in my life.  Threw away some stuff. Went through the two drawers as well.

Here’s the after:

I mean, you can at least see the top of the table now. The mess has been sorted, some of it has been trashed, and a lot of the rest has been organized and corralled.

Perhaps next I need to question the existence of every person in my life and tackle that de-cluttering project…