Eleven things - day 11 #reverb10

Prompt: 11 Things.
What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011?
How will you go about eliminating them?
How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

1. Debt - although here I'm talking credit card debt, because the student loan debt will be with me for oh so very long. My aunt who passed away last year left me a little bit of money, and when that comes through, I should finally be able to kick the last of my credit card debt. Having NO credit card debt will free up quite a bit of cash, I think, that we can put to better purposes.
2. Unfitness - I kinda wanted to avoid saying "weight," although really, it would be lovely to jettison some of that as well. My goal is to try out yoga classes over break, hoping that I enjoy them enough that I make the effort to keep them going during the semester. If not, I'll see if I can find some other kind of class. I'd kind of like to try skating lessons again, too, although it wasn't a huge success last time I tried it. It would just be nice not to feel incapable of doing stuff. 
3. Mess/clutter - mostly I need to go through the apartment once finals are done and clear up all the detritus that's accumulated (our apartment is small enough that not much clutter looks like a huge mess, and once the mess is there, it's so easy to feed it). I'm hoping to stay on top of the clutter over the next semester so we don't let it build up, AND I'm hoping we can move to a new place we can set up better to handle stuff (we don't have a lot of places actually to PUT stuff, so it all piles up. I mean, I know we let stuff pile up in a bigger space, too, but right now we really don't have a system for dealing with stuff that comes in the door, and I'm hoping a new place will be an opportunity to create one).
4. Clothes I don't wear - I did go through my closet and weed out a bunch of stuff a few months ago. What I discovered is that for someone who doesn't exercise that much, I have a TON of t-shirts/"workout" gear. For some reason I have a much harder time getting rid of T-shirts than, say, a tweed skirt - maybe because T-shirts pretty much always fit, for some purpose, whereas if the tweed skirt doesn't fit, it plain old doesn't fit and I'm not going to wear it? Honestly, though, I think the biggest side effect of getting rid of clothes would be to force me to do laundry more often. It would be nice to reach a point where everything in my closet was something I really liked to wear.
5. Boxes of books from our move to this apartment - we have about 6 bankers boxes of books piled up in our mini-entrance hallway, which we could find anyone to buy online. We just need to haul them down to the local used bookstore (which has expressed great eagerness to take them). I'm just not all that excited about hauling around bankers' boxes of books, clearly. I'm hoping that if we move this summer (which is the plan), we won't move these to the new place - when we have to get them out of here we'll take them over to the bookstore.
6. Storage space - we rent a small storage space, which currently holds some stuff we want to keep and some stuff we need to get rid of.  The want-to-keep stuff: NLLDH's grandfather's rolltop desk (into which NLLDH's uncles locked NLLDH's father when he was a wee boy, and granddad had to bust the lock to get him out); a bookcase my dad bought me when I moved to grad school (which is totally ordinary, but is wood, and hey, a bookcase! It could use a new coat of paint, though); a sort of arts-and-crafts Morris-y style chair that my parents used to have on their porch (which could really stand to be refinished and get new cushions, but it is solid oak, and it's actually really comfortable); some boxes of quilts my mom made; a couple of framed pictures. The to-get-rid-of stuff: more boxes of books (they were NLLDH's history books, back in the Ph.D. study day - they were in a storage space in Former College City, and got moved to the storage space here. Before we moved from Former College City, I purged the hell out of my books, but ran out of steam trying to purge his, because moving the books from the storage space to our 3rd-floor-no-elevator apartment, back to a moving truck just got to be too much. So we ended up moving them out here, didn't have room for them in our weeny apartment, and just moved them straight to our storage space here. THEY NEED TO GO); and random detritus we didn't know what the HELL to do with (I think there's a honking big old computer monitor in there, for instance). When we move, I'd really really REALLY like to get rid of what we don't want, and to be able to incorporate the stuff we do want back into our life. (I think if we weren't living in a 600 sq. ft. apartment, we could manage that.)
7. Distance from family - it's not like I can do anything about the geographical distance, but I would love to be able to see my family more often. Not sure how to make this happen, since I can't magically create more money or time to travel, but it is something I'd like to jettison.
8. Insecurity - I kind of hope that getting out of the school context will help with this, a little. 
9. Commuting - so this is kind of cheating, because if I weren't graduating, I wouldn't be able to eliminate this from my life. But guess what? Barring unforeseen circumstances (like failing all my spring classes), I will be able to eliminate this from my life in 2011! I will get back a good 8-10 hours of my life that won't be spent on the highway! Woohoo!

Yeah, so I've kind of run out of steam here. Feel free to suggest two more things worth eliminating! 

 

 

Comments

[Paige]

I am inspired by your listing distance, even though there's not an obvious way of eliminating it -- so I've added it to my own list of fewer than 11 things. Thanks!