We sent the Labor Day weekend Laboring

In my quest to downsize our stuff we spent most of the weekend sorting. boxing. shredding, giving away, selling back, and clearing out.

Let me 'splain...no, there is too much...let me sum up. (name that movie)

Saturday morning we grocery shopped. This is pretty much what we usually do on Saturdays.We got about a months worth of groceries but spent about half what we would have a couple of months ago. The only things that we will have to pick up are perishables such as fruits, vegetables and dairy. We will get these at the farmers market.

One of the things that I have let my supply drain down to nothing is spices and dried herbs. These are not something that I buy at Costco by the vat because they will get stale by the time I use them up. So, this weekend's shopping trip needed to include spice and dried herb buying. I absolutely refuse to buy those expensive little jars of spices. They are outrageously priced and I have no use for the little jars since I have these handy magnetic tins stuck to my refrigerator for spices. I guess I could come up with a craft project for the glass jars but I don't really have time. Lucky for me, my local market has bulk bins of about anything you could put in a bulk bin. Within the bulk bins section of the store are all these small canisters of herbs and spices. There is always several people like myself stocking up so freshness is almost assured. So this is the way I buy my dried herbs and spices. (Don't mind the messy counter top. I hadn't cleaned up from JR's espresso making that morning. Sorry, you had to see that.)

You may not be able to see from this photo but the most expensive packet is .84 cents. 84 cents for about the same amount as in the prepackaged spices. Compare this to the approximately $3 dollars one would spend on the little jars means that I probably saved around $27.00 buying my spices in these little packets and do not have the waste or worry about recycling. How cool is that!


Sunday we took the 140+ cookbooks to Half Priced Books. We made a little cash and we walked out without buying any other books. Amazing! I had planned to bring my cookbook collection down to only 20 of my favorites but this was totally unrealistic. It seems that I must have no less than 44 cookbooks at any given time. Don't ask me why.  I still feel that I have achieved the downsizing spirit. I went from 5 shelves worth to 2. Yay!

We spent the rest of the weekend clearing out the closet in my studio. It had become the dumping ground for anything we couldn't find a space for. I pulled everything out, sorted through it, tossed some, started a Goodwill donation box with some more, foisted a lot on JR to shred, and consolidated like materials that I planned to keep. The closet went from not being able to step all the way into to being able to run right into the back wall if I felt like it that is, which I didn't because that would be stupid.

I've convinced JR that if something comes into the house something must go out. This might come up and bite me in the butt since he is now trying to convince me that we have taken out enough stuff in the last month to warrant buying a bigger TV. Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

So goes our quest to de-clutter and generally downsize our belongings. Next up...the Christmas boxes. My goal is to go from 6 extra large boxes to 3 large boxes. Will I make it? If the cookbook thing is any indication I'm going to have to say no but one has to have a goal.

Love,
M