With the new year closing in, I’ve gotten into a cleaning fit. Yesterday I attacked stacks of books and papers, sorting out those to keep and those to throw away or, in the case of books, donate so they can be read again by someone else. Several trash bags later, I declared myself finished for the day.

Today I went back to the papers that ended up in the “save” stack and, armed with a stack of file folders and an empty box, started trying to impose some order. Another trash bag stuffed with things that, on second look, really didn’t need to be kept. Then I went at the recent mail stack. More stuff to dump, some things to file, and several things requiring action.

I haven’t even looked into closets yet. Won’t that be fun?

If I kept this up regularly for a couple of weeks, it would make a serious dent in the accumulated household clutter. I’m unlikely to manage that. I’ll have to satisfy myself with incremental improvements for now.

How are you preparing for the new year?