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They want to do some renovations in my apartment. Normally, they do it inbetween move outs/move ins....but mine is a special case since I've done the unheard of of living in the same apartment for 14 years.
So I've been busy for days clearing off a folding table and sofa so I can fold up the table, move the 2 drawer filing cabinet underneath it, and then move the sofa about 2-3 feet forward so they can get the new vanity in. This particular arrangement was set up a few years before I got the second apartment.
I could do this early spring cleaning in one of three ways. Go through everything, sort, put it in its proper place. Unfortunately, there isn't the time for that. Or just pick up the boxes, move them to their new location. The quickest..........and a continuation of the problem year after year.
Or, go through the boxes, toss and shred what isn't needed, box what needs to be kept (and sorted, stored) for another day. Hence, what I've been doing for the past few days.
Much of it is pull off the top cover with the address of this or that magazine to go into the shredder, the rest into the general bin. In a way, I am astonished to see this or that magazine dating back to 2008, 2006, even 2005. The Av Weeks, the diving magazines. Others, not so much as the defunked Nat'l Geo Adventure, Runner's World, AAA travel.
Where do we ever get the notion that we have the time to read such, either when signing up for the subscription or, when they come in, that we can put them aside and get around to them?
Some of them were traps, of course, like the Runner and Biker magazines. A "Gift" for using a service to sign up for a foot race only to end up paying like 3 times the subscription rate (I ended that trick many years ago).
I suppose in my case, in some future, is to take those magazines I am still subscribed to and SPEEDREAD them the day they come in. At that speed, I won't know what I read by the end of the day, but in the weeks down the road, I will.
Well, back to the grind, there are still 2-3 more boxes waiting to be done before the sofa is cleared so it can be moved.
Sounds like you have way too many subscriptions.
Perhaps you can choose to not renew them....
Did that a while back, didn't renewed, cancelled.
I don't get Nat'l Geo anymore, nor the Runner's or Biker's Worlds. The latters because, mostly, they were a rip off, the former because it was just too much to keep up with.
The Diver's magazines come because of the work I do; they can't be dodged. Neither, really, can the Av Week or the USNI Proceedings.
Things like the AAA Travel, Military Officer, USAA and the like are byproducts of the insurance or the association (MOAA). Again, it comes with the trade.......but they are very low on the scale of the "need to read".
I don't think I bother with the Alumni magazines at all, but once again, the only way you decide not to get them is to disappear completely from their radar......but I do send money to the causes I believe in.
Right now, though, the main thing is the cleaning. I just hope in my compulsion of rapid decisions, I am not shredding something vital. I don't think so....otherwise, I wouldn't be shredding it but drop it into a box to be sorted later. But.....never the less.
One more box until the sleeper sofa is "clean".....but it will have to wait for morning. Now, it is time to get ready for work.
I have Nat Geos from 1914 that I still read. I also re-read a lot of magazines periodically (sorry for the pun).
As do I (well, not from 1914). Nat'l Geos get kept; I just don't have them incoming right now. The Nat'l Geo Adventure on the other hand, is not keepable.
Av Week on the other hand, if the date on the cover is more than a year old, tops, it gets tossed. Same goes for many other magazines.
I hear you... So many. I have magazine ladies home journals etc that I have never even opened up. Not only is the happy celebrity bride on the cover is the new divorcee... The addressee, Mrs. So and so (me) is no longer a Mrs. anymore.
I hate to throw away... Seems like such a waste but I am trying to get my house in order and I find I have piles of junk.
Old bills that I paid online and no longer need those paper bills and piles of magazines. I'm just going to be wasteful
And throw it all away.
Yanno? You could be a blessing to many many senior living facilities....there are so so many nursing homes where people are so lonely, live empty days with little to do, 78 % on meds for deep depression...... why don't you look into donating them rather than recycling them at your local recycling center. This is a great time of year for us all to maybe do some spring cleaing, get rid of the paperbacks or magazines we accumulated and donate them to any elderly facility where they will brighten so many lives.
Yanno? You could be a blessing to many many senior living facilities....there are so so many nursing homes where people are so lonely, live empty days with little to do, 78 % on meds for deep depression...... why don't you look into donating them rather than recycling them at your local recycling center. This is a great time of year for us all to maybe do some spring cleaing, get rid of the paperbacks or magazines we accumulated and donate them to any elderly facility where they will brighten so many lives.
It's a good notion but there is the question of time. It's like what my Mother told me 14 years ago when I was moving out of my old apartment and there was an item in question, forget what now, waiting to go a better cause, but it hadn't been sent yet. "Your heart is in the right place but.......,"
As it is, one of the boxes I went through tonight looked like it had itself been a recycling box. It was filled with empty envelopes, other paper that did not need to be shredded. Or a box of newspapers from around 2005, waiting to be used for kitty litter.
But I suspect that one day, the entire box got pushed aside for some reason, forgotten, buried.
It's a noble action if one has the time to put it into effect, but if not, then it can become something that all so easy just sits and adds to the stack.
On another angle, as I go through a week's worth of mail, it is so interesting that a lot of it isn't even addressed to me. My mother, my father (both deceased). My father and my niece. Her father.
Most of it is junk mail and it seems that my address just ended up as the clearing house for the family.
If it takes "days" to clear off a folding table and sofa, and you can have a box of newspapers to recycle that has been sitting around since 2005, you need some professional help to address hoarding.
If it takes "days" to clear off a folding table and sofa, and you can have a box of newspapers to recycle that has been sitting around since 2005, you need some professional help to address hoarding.
Oh, let's not get into that term again....especially when I'm working on it and tossing things out.
Long story short, when one is a night shift worker, the day people put unreasonable demands on their time. At the end of each semester, year after year, I pleaded for time to catch up, and I would be told by family, "You can always do that later.". Well, this is later......and it is a few years deep.
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