Making more progress

These are Plastic containers, most of which will be sent to my daughter or my wife's relatives for the "archives". They contain memories, but nothing of value other than sentimental. Pictures, old school stuff, maybe some books, etc.
The stuff behind the ironing board (you never know when you might need an ironing board!) are empty tin cans, leftover cups that don't match anything else in the house, a can opener that doesn't work, and lots of stuff that one might need someday. I have been picking at it for two years now. Oh, I have a box of Ball jars for canning. They must be 30 years old and never used. I might set them up for target practice someday. Or not.
All of these cardboard boxes are empty. The plastic containers used to have clothing in them, but now have old blankets that I haven't been able to bring myself to throw away. They are no longer useable. I have a box cutter somewhere, but I put it down and now can't find it. I will get a sharp object and break some of these down over the next few weeks. This area will be completely clear when I finish. Read below for more information.
These are the boxes I have cleaned out the past 2 weeks or so. I am keeping them for now because they are mainly the same size and will be stack-able.
This is the darkroom. If you read my posts from last year, you will know that I had a family from my school bus come over and help me clean it out. This room was full from floor to ceiling, and had little or no room to move around.
The brown bookcase is removable, and I will use it, along with a second one before I finish. If I am able to stay in the house, I will remove everything from this room. All of the cabinets, right down to the wall. I will probably turn it into a bathroom since it is the right size. It already has plumbing. The orange thing to the left is a slide projector, and the gray thing on the floor is a Super 8 movie projector. I also have a Brownie Camera out of the shot. They can be dated back to when I was a kid.

For the full story, read below:

I was watching TV this morning and came upon a show about the 7 deadly sins. I don't usually follow this type of broadcast, but they were talking about "Sloth".
I have heard the word before, but really didn't know what it meant.
They were nice enough to give several definitions, enough so I could get a good idea what the word meant.
Sloth can be laziness, or idleness. It can mean that you lose touch with things that are supposed to be important and you just give up. Depression might be a good description as to how you are supposed to be feeling when experiencing Sloth.
Of course, they went on to say that some believed that a demon was in charge of the sin, and when you gave in to it, the demon inhabited your soul, calling for an exorcism to get rid of him/it.
Well, now that I know about Sloth, I decided to think about it whenever I get complacent.
I don't give in to religious fanaticism, but this term is a good description of how I've felt for a long, long time.
I deserve to be depressed. I lost so much in the past 5 years.
I never gave in to the depression, but it sure has slowed me down.
Now that I've given it a name, I will know how to fight it better.
When I am too tired to keep going, I will go a little further.
I still have to pace myself, but when I know I am just goofing off because I can, I will try to think about sloth and instead of just watching TV or surfing the web, I will get up and do something.
In this post, are pictures of some of the progress I've made in the past month or so.
I started saving boxes. Empty boxes. I am not going to become a hoarder and never get rid of them. I am going to use them to document my progress.
I will caption these pictures above, since I can't figure out how to spread the pictures throughout the post. You will have to read all the way down to here in order to know why I would post pictures of empty boxes.

These boxes represent two things:

1. Purchases I've made to replace broken things. Or, new purchases in the past year of things I've wanted for years but were never allowed to get because the kids came first.
2. I've gone through the boxes, and consolidated, given away, or trashed the contents.
   

The empty box means there was something in it that fell under those conditions.

Some of the boxes were never opened since before 1992. We have moved many times over the years, as I've said before. With each move, we packed things well, but never had time to open some of these boxes. Or, we didn't have anywhere to go with the contents. There may be boxes in that collection that haven't been opened since they were packed in 1976. I'm not sure. We got married in 76, and moved into our first apartment in September of that year. Who knows?

The next door neighbor worked for a company that made boxes, and he brought us a pile of them with Reese's logos on them. There were two different sizes. I liked the smaller ones because they were easier to pack and lighter to carry. Those are from 1988.

When I finish with all my re-packing, I will have several kinds of boxes:

• Worn out or empty boxes that I will break down and trash.
• Storage boxes filled with things that I want to keep. I will try to organize them so they are all close to the same size, so I can stack them.
  
• Storage boxes with things to give to my wife's relatives for their "archives".
• Boxes to give to my kids with things they would want or not.

I took 6/42 gallon bags of trash to the curb last week and this week. This is my battle against Sloth!
I wonder what I will do when I run out of things to trash? At this rate, I won't ever run out!
On a side note, the house that burned down next door has been emptied out. They had a restoration team take everything out of the house. Furniture, clothing, stored items, appliances. They filled up 4 trash bins. These bins are the kind that come on the back of the huge trucks and are dropped on the driveway. They are 6 feet high, about the same wide, and 30 feet long.
I estimate that if I had gotten a bin for my stuff, I could have filled up two of them myself, instead of taking bags to the curb. That wouldn't include furniture or appliances like the washer, dryer, etc.
Last year, I estimate I took at least 3 bags to the curb every week. That would be at least 150/42 gallon bags just last year. I didn't mention the stuff that didn't fit into bags that have gone too.
So, even though I feel like sloth is creeping up on me and threatening to overwhelm me, all I have to do is look at where I was, and where I am now to see that.....
Life is Good!