As you all know, I am in the process of moving out of my apartment and into a new place. I have three weeks left, leaving me scrambling for time, especially since I work full time, am traveling for TVGrapevine and have a holiday in between all of it.
This makes the process of packing even more stressful. As one may know, it is easy to accumulate stuff throughout the years. In the business I am in, I get a lot of DVDs, clothes and other such goodies. I also love to shop (bargain shopping is kind of my specialty), so that adds to the clutter.
Cue the Take or Toss game! Do you remember that scene in the Sex and the City movie where Carrie was moving in with Big and had that Take or Toss party with Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte? That is where I am now. While I don’t have my girls with me at the moment, I am still playing this game.
In order to make it easier, I am taking one section of my apartment at a time. I began with my kitchen area and realized my biggest clutter came from….TUPPERWARE!! FREAKING TUPPERWARE. I have no clue how I ended up with so much when it always seemed like I never had enough in the past. Between giving people leftovers when they visit, cooking etc, it seems like there is always too much or too little of it. I also tend to save the Tupperware from takeout places, which only adds to the mess. Needless to say, this is the first Keep or Toss portion of my move.
The truth is, it was actually easier than I anticipated. I still have no clue where the heck all of the Tupperware came from, but once I went through it all, I was able to decide what was worth saving and what could be tossed.
TAKE: The bigger pieces, the lunch sized pieces and the small ones that could be used for snacks and portion sizing. (I admit, I did that 21 day fix about five years ago and while I wasn’t a fan of the fix, I did love the containers) The latter two will motivate me to—-wait for it—-bring my lunch to work—while the bigger ones can be used for baking, lasagnas and other such foods.
TOSS: The Chinese food/takeout containers, junky ones and ones that can’t even fit two bites of food. The junky ones seem obvious, but for some reason, I could never let them go. Now that I realize I won’t ever use them, it is a good time to let them go. While I do like the takeout ones, I realized I had so many and never really used them. Off to the garbage they go! I figure that if I ever want more, I could always just buy takeout another time.
The rest of the stuff in my kitchen is in fairly good shape. The dishes, glasses and mugs will of course be kept, as will most of the silverware. The only things that will most likely get tossed are some of the bakeware and pans that have seen better days. While they once served me (no pun intended), I noticed several of them are burned and not in as good shape as they used to be….as my girl Jenny reminded me, things that no longer serve a purpose should be let go and we can trust that if we do need them someday, we can always replace them.
Next up: the rest of my closet and the DVDs.
