The Big Clear Out of 2016

The decluttering has taken on a life of its own.  On the down side, the house is at the 'looks worse before it gets better' stage (i,e, a complete mess!) but on the plus side, there is no point doing any housework until I've finished the Big Clear Out of 2016 - there's always a positive side to things if you look for it!

Today (and probably for the next couple of days) is 'Project Get the Books Sorted'.  I'm taking them over to the National Trust at Avebury next Wednesday for them to use for fundraising via their pop-up book sales.  

So far I've gathered up the books from all over the house and dumped them in the living room, ready to be packed up.  These are the books which were easy to spot (but I have a feeling there may be others still packed in boxes in the spare bedrooms) and includes the books I have no interest in keeping (mainly the ones that belonged to my late partner), novels that have been passed on to me but which I haven't (and probably won't) get around to reading, and novels that I've read but won't read again. It doesn't include the books I can sell, the novels I still want to read/re-read, or the music reference books that I'm keeping until I make a decision on whether I want to attempt some of the higher level theory exams.

The next stage is packing them ready for transportation and, for today at least, that's ground to a halt as I need to get hold of some more of the heavy duty red sacks to finish the job.  I've estimated that I'll end up with about 30 bags and five boxes so it's possible that I may have to do more than one trip over to Avebury.  

As a result of doing this, my bedroom, the dining room and the music room now only contain the correct furniture with no extra pieces taking up room.  These three rooms also only contain the things that should be kept in them. Two spare bookcases have been moved to the garage awaiting disposal and everything else is in the two spare bedrooms waiting to be sorted.

It's worth the effort!