Kon Mari Part Three: Paper!

We're still chugging along with on KonMari decluttering "event", which is part of the reason I haven't been posting much. We're at the stage where things get worse before they get better so it is a little overwhelming at times! Here are some photos from the night we did the paper category. We also did cookbooks that night, just because it worked out that way. Here is the before:

We piled up all the cookbooks, and Travis pulled everything out of our three drawer filing cabinet. Some people in the facebook group I'm in took DAYS to do this category. I think because we're in our 20's (well, until a few days ago!) and have a lot of stuff online, don't use credit cards, and haven't had any medical issues (knock on wood) we didn't have much to go through. All our files are in the green crate, along with mailing supplies/cards/notebooks.

It was pretty funny to go through these files. For some reason I've been filing every vet bill we've ever gotten by pet (we have five so that adds up!). Why do I need an invoice for Priscilla's ear infection medicine? I kept just the most recent rabies vaccination slips and the dog's microchip information.
I also had files of phone bills going back years, bank statements from an account I had before I got married (7 years ago) and of course the pile of manuals for appliances we don't have anymore. This category was easy for us.

I couldn't believe Travis didn't want to keep this X-ray of his teeth! But I have to respect his process. So I snapped a pic and then it got shredded.

There is all the paper we got rid of! Woah!

Our shredder sucks (we trashed it in another category actually) so Travis went the burn route. Even if our shredder didn't suck he would have done this. Building a fire is one of his favorite things to do.

After the first round here is what I was down to! About a quarter of the cookbooks I had before (I use most of these a lot, and some others are pretty new and by authors I reference a lot) a pile of files to organize and just a few blank cards to keep on hand. We ended up not needing the filing cabinet at all (bummer cuz it was cute and green) so we put it out at the end of our driveway and a guy in a truck picked it up within 30 minutes. In the same day I got rid of our bedside tables. Mine just held a pile of books that didn't move for over a year, and a bowl of receipts and trash. I haven't missed them yet!

After sorting here are all our important papers (minus our giant mortgage folder, I'm not sure what of that we need to keep, so I'm going to go through it later when I'm in the mood). One binder holds our last 7 years of tax refund info, the other has everything else.

I bought these binders a few years ago because I loved how they looked but never really had a use for them. I'm happy I get to use them now!
I'm still loving Kon Mari even though we've slowed down. The process really works!

Nashville Flea: April

The weather has been beautiful lately so the flea market was packed with vendors and shoppers this past weekend! I wasn't sure how I would feel about shopping at the flea since we've been working on our big clean out, but I still loved looking at everything and taking photos. Here is what I saw: 

No more games until we go through our huge collection. Tempted by that Casper game.....

I took this for the chalk dog (always drawn to those things) but then I noticed the flower frog. Does that really say one dollar? Dangit I should have gotten it!

I think these Kokeshi picks might haunt me.  I have a collection of big ones but wasn't sure how I'd display these little ones. I've never seen any like them!

The cutest cottage cheese containers! The bunny one is a mask!

I thought about getting one of those Mr. Mugs buttons.

Look at the bullets on that frame!

I love this one too!

This guy had about four good things in his booth and they all had sold stickers. I think they were just props. And look at these poison peanuts. I bet that didn't catch on, seems a little dangerous.

Rocky and E.T. Power couple.

I don't like to leave any knee huggers behind, but this guy was in really bad shape. Sorry little guy!

teeny stuffed goat!

I saw this geisha paint by number sometime last year and regretted not buying it. Travis talked me out of it again. It is kind of sloppily done but I love how it looks!

Here is our main purchase. It's a cooler! Isn't it cute? I'm excited to use it all summer.

The only other things we bought were three souviner plates. I still had fun, even though I'm not buying as much. I can't wait for next month!

We went for veggie dogs at the Dog of Nashville. Those handcut fries! That cute dude!

Because of my new position at work I'm supposed to get weekends off. This is the first weekend it happened and I loved it. I hope it lasts, at least for a little while!

Happy Gotcha Day Priscilla!

Thanks to my time hop app I saw that today is the fourth anniversary of Priscilla joining our family! I can't believe we've had her that long! We were told she was 8 when we got her, so maybe she is 12 now? That is one thing I don't like about adopting pets, you never know how old they might be.

Priscilla came from Williamson County Animal Control. My friend McCray was working there and sent me this photo in a text. Travis wasn't sure at first, but we decided I would at least pull her and foster her for a pug rescue. We fostered a few times before, we weren't totally delusional!

But she ended up being a perfect fit for Phyllis and there was no question that she would stay with us forever. She had TERRIBLE ear infections when we got her, and now she is basically blind, can't hear much, and has very bad joints. But I wouldn't trade her.

Here are some of my favorite photos of our beautiful senior lady.

Perfect baby pumpkin.

Beautiful angel in her pink raincoat.

 She is under doctor's orders to gain a pound, but other than that her senior exam went very well. Her bloodwork came back as good as it can for a senior lady. Happy four years of being my baby Priscilla! I can't imagine life without her now, and I hope she'll be with us for at least four more years!

Birthday Kigurumi!

My birthday isn't until next week, but last weekend Travis went camping with my best friend's husband and she took that opportunity to give me my present early! She got me a Totoro Kigurumi!!! We had a slumber party and wore these the whole time.

Look at him! It's so cute!

Kigurumi are from Japan, land of everything cute! They are basically costume pajamas and I love mine! They are so baggy and cozy and it makes you feel like you are wrapped in a comfy blanket. Crystal got herself a generic bear. Look at the butts! So funny!

Man, I can't get over how much I love mine. To bad we're going into summer so it'll be too hot to wear it soon. But I'm set for next winter! I may have turned the air conditioning up and the ceiling fan on high the other day so I could lay on the couch in mine. Haha.

Crystal picked me up from work and we started our ladies weekend with a trip to Sephora where we tried on too many kind of nail polish. I bought glitter eyeliner (you only live once right?)  Then we went to Two Boots to get pizza. They make my favorite vegan pizza ever! The "V is for Vegan" one. Highly recommend! And check out those nails.

Nail photo shoot. I'm still cracking up about his photo. I love hanging out with Crystal so much.

We went back to her house and watched Rupaul's drag race then went on a dessert run with our friend Thomas. Then we went to a Joan Crawford party at Lisa's house. It was so fun!

The next day we watched more drag race and then met the boys for a celebratory lunch at Chuy's. They hiked 18 miles! What a great weekend.

KonMari Part Two: Books!

Here is the next part in my series on my experience with the Marie Kondo system of tidying. You can see part one here!
After you go through your clothes, the next category is books. I'll be honest, I was scared to start this category. Travis and I had over 1,000 books in our house and I used to move several boxes of books with me to college every semester. We love browsing used book stores, lending books we love to friends and we were even planning on getting a custom built in bookcase built across an entire wall of our living room. Here are MOST of our books before.

On the left, two stuffed mismatched bookcases  in our living room. A few months ago I had gone through and gotten rid of what I thought was a large pile of books. On the right is one of two built in bookcases in our bedroom. I always called this "the good book shelf" because all my favorites lived there.

And here is the other weird bookcase in our room. Isn't it a strange shape? This one was made over pretty recently to make space for my dream pets.

As part of the process you pull every book in your house down and pile them together. This is everything but our cookbooks, craft books, and a big shelf of vintage kids books in our front room. I'll work on that one once that room gets easier to move around in.

Look at all these! Travis and I both love to read. I've held onto most books I've read, even if it wasn't something I'd read again. I even had books that I didn't like, but they had cool covers or I knew they were supposed to be good. Silly!

Piles and piles and piles.

I sat on the floor and went through the stacks, while Travis kept a tally. Because I had just read Marie Kondo's book it was easy for me to put most of the books in the get rid of pile. I would say something like "3 keep, 14 get rid of."

In the end we kept about 275 books, and took about 690 to McKay's, a local used book store. Woah! They wouldn't even all fit in the trunk of my car!

Here is what we took in! It took them a week or two to get back to us with a price, but we ended up getting about $260 cash. Not as much as we hoped, but hey, that is for stuff that was just sitting around our house! Travis took some action figures and I took some camera lenses later in the week and we got another $200 for those.

Here is the keep stack. It it is a lot of books I loved as a kid and have read over and over. I also kept lots of my graphic novels, and just a few books I haven't read yet. I put most of my HUGE too read stack on my library list so I'll just check them out on my kindle. I even ended up getting rid of my bedside table! It was pretty much just a place to stack books I didn't read for several years, and receipts.

We had MANY copies of all the Lord of the Rings books for some reason. We kept the coolest looking version of each. We even got rid of our hard back Harry Potter books! I definitely reread that series, but always the paperback copies. The hardbacks are just inconvenient to carry around. Travis kept just one of his Stephen King books, and just one Chuck Palahniuk. I'm so proud of how on board with this process he has been.

Be My Baby by Ronnie Spector is one of my favorite books of all time! If you are interested in girl groups you have to read it! It's so good!

See, lots of my favorite books from my childhood. The Witches or Matilda by Roald Dahl are two comfort books for me. If I'm home sick I love to lay in bed and read one of those. Or Harriet the Spy. Or any of the Bunnicula books! And see that copy of Where the Red Fern Grows? I got it from the scholastic book fair in elementary school and I can vividly remember laying in bed and crying at the end of it. It is the first book that made me cry. I love it.

Another author I've always loved is Beverly Cleary, especially books about Ramona, or Ralph S. Mouse! Does it seem weird that out of all the books I have I kept the ones for children? I don't think so, those are the ones that sparked joy with me, and make me happy to see on my shelves.

I was going to do a side by side before and after with these shelves but look! They are empty! All of the books fit on the larger shelf in our bedroom! I'm using these shelves to sort things for now, but they will probably be out of here eventually. How crazy is that? Now I have other plans for that wall since we don't need built ins anymore. As you can see, we have a lot of work to do sorting our game collection. That is one of three shelves. Ah!

And here they are! I really can't believe it. I moved my poodle bottle cover collection in here, which I love and can now look at every day.

Knick knacks are going to be HARD for me but I put some of my favorites on this bookshelf. I've had most of these dalmatians as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I used to always say when I grew up I wanted to animate 101 Dalmatians. Which is nonsense! I had two of the sleeping puppy on the right and was agonizing over whether I should keep them both, when I dropped one and it's head popped off. Meant to be I guess.

These candles are from the first year we went to the Elvis vigil at Graceland. Precious memories.

I went through my cds at the same time I went through the books since they are on the same shelf. Lots of them went to McKays and I threw out most of the mix cds I had from high school That spindle is actually discs of our wedding photos. I'm going to back them all up on a few hard drives then throw them away. I also treated myself to a teeny iPod and have started transferring all of my cds onto our computer. We'll see if I can get rid of the actual cds! I do use them all the time, but I don't really have to have physical copies.

If you had told me even two months ago that I would be getting rid of most of my books I would have told you that you were crazy! But when we took all those books to McKay's it felt so good! Liberating almost! Now I just have the ones I love, and if I feel like I need to read something I got rid of again, I can just check it out on my kindle.
I'm still loving this process. We've definitely slowed down (because you can't work on it every minute you aren't at work all the time) but I feel great about it. Several people I know have picked up the book since I've been talking about it and I can't wait to hear how it goes for them.