Decluttering

Yesterday, I took the 1952 edition of Mortimer Adler's Great Books of the Western World that I bought eleven years ago for $400 back to the local used bookstore, where I got $20 worth of math books for my son in exchange.  (He helped me carry the books, it was only fair.)  Thanks to getting rid of the five-foot-shelf's worth of unreadable books (great though the works themselves may be), I was able to move the four-foot-high stack of boxes of Lego bricks out of the entryway and onto a shelf in the hallway alcove and, with a bit of rearranging, the boxes of board games out of the hallway alcove and onto the shelf where the Great Books had been gathering dust for the past nine years.  Things really started snowballing after that.  The entryway is now clear of stuff for the first time in eight-and-a-half years, the hallway alcove no longer looks like a rubbish heap, and I find that it is not in fact the case that what I need is a house.  What I need is an emptier apartment.  Why it makes me so nervous to say this, I am not entirely sure, but I am close to having a panic attack as I write this.  Which is interesting, given that our country's single most dedicated enemy (to the best of our knowledge) is now (according to our president) dead.

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