My mother has been in the house for 40 years and it has an attic and basement each as large as the apartments. So you can imagine.

Only 9 years in my house and I easily doubled the amount of furniture I had when I moved in. I think I have fewer clothes though.

I am making lists of things to get rid of and am trying to offload a few things each month if I have the spoons.

12 years in this house which I still can't believe and I need to do some serious getting rid of stuff.

My parents have been in their place for (gets out calculator (turn of the century makes this hard!)) 33 years but they have been actively trying to get rid of accumulated stuff for probably half that time. There is still a lot of stuff but it is very organized and there could have been much much more.

I still have nightmares from cleaning out the house we lived in for ten years.

I've been in my apartment for 12 years now. Being a two bedroom flat, you'd think the amount of crap I can accumulate would be limited. And yet.

Happy birthday to Mac!

FINALLY I CAN GET SOME LUNCH

Now I have to decide what to eat.

::cries::

Now I have to decide what to eat.

Bachelor Chow sometimes makes so much sense. Nutritious, inoffensively pleasant to eat, simple, done.

I wonder where I can get a club sandwich within walking distance of here.

I can understand why some people eat the same damn thing for lunch every day.

I would buy huge bags of Bachelor Chow at Costco.

I came up with something and ordered it, hooray! It won't be ready for another 20 minutes or so, but I should be able to last that long.

ETA: I made a gallon or so of granola a week and a half ago and have been eating that for a lot of meals including breakfast today. Did not bring enough with me to have it again for lunch, alas.

We've been here ten years, and we culled a lot before we moved, and again when we unpacked. And still....

Recently H brought back two carloads of things of his brother's, and from his mom's house, family things. And some of those we've donated, a lot of it got sent back with StY when he came to visit recently, especially since he flew out and drove H's prize Pontiac home. He took what he wanted to keep, since it will all be his, or direct gifts to local friends, eventually, anyway.

And still, and still, these rooms that were so big and open are seeming smaller and fuller of...stuff...lately. Time for another ruthless purge and donate this spring, I think. The nearly-new loveseat a deceased neighbor's kids gave us, the giant treadmill I haven't used in ten years and am no more likely to use going forward. The pantry desperately needs cleaned out and reorged--we haven't used the ice cream maker since we've been here, nor the giant roasting pan, nor an accumulation of kitchen gadgets too fiddly to clean to be worth using instead of a knife. Things like that.

I've been relentless against horizontal creep (lay a bill or a flyer on a horizontal surface, the next time you look, a pile of mail has become part of that horizontal surface and is no longer discernible as separate from that surface), but things fill up corners and cupboards and closets, and the overflow is slowly sapping my will to live. Must...retaliate, and regain breathing and living space.