Misadventures of a Pack Rat - Day 3

As I have been laying awake the past couple of nights "stressing" over how I am going to accomplish this goal of removing clutter and extra stress from my life, I realize that I can't just go haphazardly from one spot to the next without some kind of a plan.  I need to pick an area and keep working on it until it's done.  So today I chose the bookcases in the office as a place to focus.

Remember, this is how they looked on Day One before I started.

Over the course of the day, I removed close to 75 books from the shelves.  A few of them went into the church library box which unfortunately means I will have to handle them a second time because I am the librarian.  I will need to catalog them before taking them to the church.  Happily, the majority of them went into the bags for the thrift store.  There was no lollygagging.  Everything I have purged in the past couple of days was taken to the thrift store this very afternoon before there was a chance for me to change my mind.

Here is the final result.  As you can see, I still have a lot of books.  I filled one whole shelf with books from my room.  All my children's books are together on one shelf now, including some of my favorite titles, "Heidi", "The Secret Garden" and  "Peter Pan".  There is also a separate shelf for my holiday books.  Some people would still see this as cluttered, but I think it reflects me and I can remove more later if I want to.  The sailboat speaks to my love of the ocean.  The little pink candle and the red oxcart are gifts from my mom's travels.  I acquired the wooden giraffe during my mission trip to  Namibia, Africa, the eagle feather was found by my husband in our own front yard, and of course, the pictures are from when my children were in school, all things that generate happy thoughts.

Now it's time to kick back and have a glass of iced tea.  It's been a productive day.  I haven't decided if I am going to do more tomorrow or if I am going to take a break.  It may depend on how well I sleep tonight. :)