Fall Updates

In honour of the changing of the seasons and this beautiful Fall day here is an update on the status of my great summer purge of 2013. It was the summer of 2013 and I engaged on a rather ambitious summer project to become more of a minimalist. I set myself some lofty goals and I didn't get to every one of them because some were much bigger jobs than I originally thought; however, I did achieve a lot that I'm very proud of. I put a dent in my stuff and I took that all important first step and made some great strides towards living a more minimalist life.

Firstly, I tackled my closet with help from a friend and purged 170 pieces of clothing and I stuck to not shopping throughout the summer. Now with the new season I've found myself doing a bit of shopping again but I also know that another purge is due in order to organize my closet for a new season. I'm setting myself a new goal of shorting through my fall and winter wardrobe and then figuring out how to shop based on what pieces I already have and what pieces I need in order to have coordinating outfits that I'll actually wear. In terms of purging my accessories, I did pick out the ones that I really like and enjoy and wear the most often and I got rid of a lot of old and out of style ones.

The other big purge job I did was my books. I'm most proud of this because it was long overdue and I feel so much better getting rid of that access weight I've been carrying around with me for way too long. My books were originally on several different bookshelves throughout my parents house and I didn't know which books I had read or still needed to read. I also had way too many out of date texts books just hanging around and collecting dust and that I hadn't looked at since University (over 5 years ago!). So I sorted my books into the following categories: read & keep, donate/sell, and to read. I also sorted through the books I had that I needed to return to various friends and tried to do so as much as feasibly possible. I put all my books I was going to keep onto one bookshelf and organized them according to read, to-read, self-help, cookbooks and other.

The finished beautiful masterpiece of my bookshelf! :)

In the case of my textbooks I was originally planning on just throwing them out because they are all way out of date and who wants/needs them at this point? But then I found out that a cousin of mine has been collecting old texts books at garage sales and re-selling them on amazon to all sorts of people, like students and collectors. So obviously I thought that instead of wasting these books and having them end up in a garage pile, I thought I would at least try my hand at the amazon seller world and see what came of it. So far I have sold 2 textbooks for $50 each, which is awesome considering I didn't have that money beforehand and now the books are going to a good home, at least I hope.

My pile of textbooks just waiting for a happy home to take them in. 

Now in terms of the other challenges of organizing all my stored stuff in my parents basement and purging my sticker/paper collection, I haven't quite got to that yet. They're very big jobs that will become part of a new Fall challenge for myself. The sticker/paper collection is a tough one because of the sentimental connection I have to it because I bought a lot of it as emotional crutches when I was going through a hard time. I guess having to go through and purge the stickers and paper represents in my head having to face that dark time in my past, but maybe it'll also help me cleanse and heal those old wounds? I think it is something I still must do.

My new Fall challenge to myself includes organizing and purging my winter clothes, my stored stuff at my parents house and my sticker and paper collection as well as continue to sell my textbooks on amazon. As always, here's to your uncommonly wealthy life! :)