I just realized that I have used the same cardboard boxes (salvaged from grocery and other retail stores) in not one, not two, not three, but FOUR MOVES:

Portland Ave. apartment in St. Paul --> Cushing Cir. apartment in St. Paul

Cushing Cir. apartment --> Decatur, GA

Decatur, GA --> Greenville, NC

Greenville, NC --> Lafayette, LA

Hooray for me. Four will probably be it, though, because I don't think we have a dedicated storage space for them in the new digs.

I've been enjoying Merlin Mann's War on Clutter posts:

My War on Clutter
My War on Clutter: Never “organize” what you can discard
My War on Clutter: The Tools to Purge BIG
My War on Clutter: Inspiration for Independence Day
Vox Pop: Converting clutter from trash to treasure

Because we're moving in three weeks, I've been frantically packing MANY boxes, and I've done one haul to Goodwill so far, with at least one or two more to come. I did a variation on the 27-fling boogie, and as I've mentioned here, I implemented a plan for us to eat all the food in our house so that 1.) we won't have to waste much; 2.) we can pack the dishes, pots, pans, flatware, and glasses sooner; and 3.) it will be easier for us to clean the refrigerator and pantry as we near the moveout date.

As I've also mentioned here, I haven't bought shower gels or soaps since late 2006, which has ended up meaning that we had, so far, a seven-month supply of the stuff. It will end up being a lot more than seven months total, though, as we still have two bottles of shower gel, one Bath & Body Works coconut lime verbena soap, and last night I used all of my samples of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume oil to make soap using a base I got from a craft store several months ago (nine soaps total). I still have more soap base and perfume oil, too. I wouldn't be surprised if my supply carries us into 2008.

Being conscious of this copious supply of bath stuff has been less than pleasant. I do love good smells, but I'm painfully aware of the need to declutter by using the things I have,

(I'm talking here about my particular impulse overbuys, which are:

• bath stuff
• hair products
• perfume
• lotion
• cute office supplies like gel pens, little notebooks, and stationery
• makeup)

and not buying new stuff just because it smells good or has seductive packaging. I can reduce so much of my clutter-related anxiety and save so much money just by using what I have. It's such a simple concept, but it's been a breakthrough of sorts for me. I've put an official moratorium on buying the things on that list until I've used all of my current supply of that thing.

My mom has always been big on stocking up on supplies. I agree that it's important to have about a week's worth of stuff you need, like food and toiletries, but I've been taking it way too far.

Anyway, my contribution to the War on Clutter blogging effort is the following:

1. Identify the specific things you have way too much of (also your buying habits)
2. Don't buy any more of those things until you use what you have (if the things you overbuy are, in fact, use-up-able)
3. Get rid of anything you feel less than taste-confident about. As I've mentioned recently, I feel somewhat insecure about my personal taste. Most of my knickknacks are cute, but they look like stuff that would be in a 21-year-old's apartment (because hey, that's what I like). So if I'm not really proud of it, off to Goodwill it goes.

Like New Kid, I'm thinking a lot about moving lately. There are so many little things to do, phone calls to make, etc., and I'm trying to keep track of everything. I'm also constantly mentally sorting our inventory of stuff to think about what we can use, recycle, or give away.

I realized a little while ago that I have not bought any shower gel in the year 2007. This is remarkable for two reasons: first, I haven't bought any shower gel in six months (though there were big hauls in June and December of 2006); and second, we have had a well over six-month supply of shower gel in the bathroom closet. We have the equivalent of two eight-ounce bottles left, so we won't be buying any more until we've relocated, nor will we be buying any hair care products.

Jonathan says that bath products are a big part of my consumer identity, which is an understatement. Still, I think about how much money we would save just buying Suave or store brand shower gel. I would like to turn over a new leaf once we get to Louisiana and spend less on bath stuff. I have a boatload of perfumes and lotions anyway, so I'll smell expensive for many years to come. Will I be able to do it?

Also, Jonathan had a brilliant idea last night. He has wanted to sort our books according to the Library of Congress classification system, as we have a lot, but so far in our moves, we've been too anxious to unpack and just put books on shelves. Plus we didn't want to reshelve if our predictions about quantity of each classification were wrong. But Jonathan is now planning to sort our books (or maybe only his books, we'll see) as he packs them. The great leap forward.

I sure would like to have this:

BUT, we're moving in a few weeks, so we are buying NOTHING until we get to Lafayette. In fact, we need to use up all the stuff we already have that can be used up, and give away some other stuff.

On a related note, I've been cooking up a storm lately so that we eat all the food in our pantry before the move: biscuits to use up flour, butter, and sour cream (that's my biscuit recipe); deviled eggs to use up eggs, mustard, celery, and onion; a beans/rice concoction; and peanut butter balls, to use up peanut butter, honey, dry milk powder*, and wheat germ. That's just a sampling of the food we have.

* We have so much dry milk powder that I've been adding it to all kinds of stuff, like instant oatmeal, which we also have a lot of to eat. Turns out that adding dry milk powder to stuff is a good and unobtrusive way to add protein and calcium to a dish, so that's a bonus. The reason we have dry milk powder in the first place is that I hate milk, and Jonathan's indifferent to it, so we can never use even a pint of milk by the expiration date. So for any recipe that calls for milk, I just mix up a little from the powder.

Most of the time I'm afraid to say what it is I really like in terms of art, music, architecture, interior decoration, and even literature, lest the higher connoisseurs reprove me. In matters of taste, there are certain friends and family members of mine who have made me feel ashamed when I said I liked something, and they were horrified and quick to correct me.

Bleh. I guess I'm just a rustic. One impulse I've had to this is never to say when I do like something, only when I don't. It's usually safe not to like something. Another possible response is only to choose things which are unambiguously, assiduously kitschy (and appreciate them ironically, of course). If this post were a meme, I'd tag Laura, who actually has unfailingly good taste and doesn't seem to have my confidence issues when it comes to that, to see what her thoughts were. I've loved her posts on house decoration and seeing the often kitschy items she gets on eBay, which I sincerely like.

But it's not a meme, not yet, anyway. Anyway, another possible response is to outsource taste by hiring decorators so that you don't have to be accountable. Maybe I can psych people out, make them doubt themselves, by feigning horror at what they like. Nah, that's too mean. I guess I'll apologize for my sometimes erring taste by calling it eclectic. I will say this: I like sparseness, but with a lot of whimsy.

Ah well, that was a preambulatory rant. The whole point of this post is to say how much I love this crib bedding:

All that stuff on the wall would have to go (too busy), and probably the bows and the lamp too, but I love the black and white toile. I guess it's way too soon to go ahead and order it...

I was tagged a while back for a meme, but it's been difficult for me to respond. What with finding housing in Lafayette and gearing up for the move, car trouble, and other minor setbacks, this has been a most unproductive summer so far. I hope to turn it around, though.

Anyway, here's what I generally do to Get Things Done:

• Use Nozbe to keep track of my active projects
• Use a Post-it Weekly Planner:

  

  to see what the week ahead looks like

• Carry around a small notebook, about 5"x7", to record any thoughts I have

and that's it. The notebook is small enough to fit in my purse, and I write down a little bit of EVERYTHING in there -- lists of what I eat, what kinds of exercise I do, phone numbers and other bits of data I need to remember, and day-to-day to-do lists. I give myself permission to make that notebook a catchall, and I don't organize it any particular way. I do date everything I write in there, as many GTD-ers recommend. These notebooks are a complete brain dump, and I go through them pretty quickly. I save them, but I think I'll implement a policy similar to student papers: save them for a year, then recycle them.

I have tried a tickler file before, but it didn't turn out to be all that useful, not that I wouldn't try it again, especially given the new administrative position I'll be starting in the fall. I've also used a Hipster PDA, and I still have it, but I don't tend to use it as often as the other things I mentioned.

Also known as Bullets of Random Crap:

• I'll admit it: I love that show Sunset Tan on E!. How can a reality show about a tanning salon be so good?
• I hope that in the next year or two, I will have a child. Things that terrify me: weight gain, postpartum depression, not being able to produce milk (I have nightmares about this one). Things I'm strangely not that afraid of: stretch marks (I actually think they look kind of cool), medical/technological intervention in the birth process.
• A couple of years ago, my good friend Pamela emailed me and some other friends a list. She said, "Think of all the people we hung out with in college." She had an impressive number of names, but a lot of them were just first names with a couple of identifiers, like "so'n'so's ex" or "lived in Florence Arms Apartments." We filled in the list, but we forgot about it for a while. Then Pamela started talking about organizing a reunion in August 2008 for the whole group, and by "the whole group," I mean our network of friends, rivals, enemies, frenemies, and acquaintances you merely tolerated for the sake of the group, all of whom were students at the University of North Alabama in the early-to-mid-1990s or Florence townies who were twentysomething in the early-to-mid-1990s. The list, which has turned out to be impressively long, is another instance of Dunbar's number. We've found some of these people on MySpace and set up a MySpace group for the reunion. In an attempt to find as many of the other people as possible, I'm listing their names here so that my site will come up if they Google themselves, or if a close friend or family member Googles them.

  1. Jason Bean
  2. Clay Bedingfield
  3. Todd Beene
  4. Amanda Lewis Belmares
  5. Blake Beverly
  6. Greg Biggers
  7. Trey Blanke
  8. Wendy Seay Bostich
  9. Marcia Bowling
  10. Allison Brazier
  11. Amy Bridenbaugh
  12. Bradley Brock
  13. Seth Brown
  14. Zane Brown
  15. Jimmy Burke
  16. Becca Cardin
  17. Willy Cardin
  18. Kitty Cobb
  19. Brian Conner
  20. Kurt Conner
  21. Nani Warrington Cooper
  22. Nathan Cooper
  23. Paul Cox
  24. Chelie Curran
  25. Carolann Daniel
  26. Jeff DeQuattro
  27. Cali Devaney
  28. Rich Dodson
  29. Steven Draper
  30. Nick Dugan
  31. Jason Elmore
  32. Jason English
  33. Bob English
  34. Eli Faulkner
  35. Roddy Fernandez
  36. David Flack
  37. Andy Frith
  38. Christie Gann (or Christy Gann)
  39. Michael Garrison
  40. Channing Givens
  41. Jason Glass
  42. Ann Glass
  43. Jon Gregory
  44. Michael Gregson
  45. Jason Haney
  46. Meagan Rikard Haney
  47. Cory Hannah
  48. Scott Harbour
  49. Blake Harrison
  50. Peter Heim
  51. Evan Heird
  52. Mary Helgamo
  53. Denys Hemen
  54. Pamela Hicks
  55. Earl Hicks
  56. Wally Hodges
  57. Toby Holder
  58. Amber Holder
  59. Mike Hollander
  60. Wendi Holt
  61. Patterson Hood
  62. Adam Howard
  63. Charity Howard
  64. Allison Stack Irons
  65. Bill Johnson
  66. Felicia Kaldi
  67. J. Lee King
  68. Shane Kirby
  69. Lisa Koontz
  70. Carrie Comer Kyzer
  71. Wendy Lawson
  72. Amy Rutherford Letson
  73. Tina Lott
  74. Libby Lynn
  75. Sara Simpson Martin
  76. Kory Martin
  77. Todd Mason
  78. Jason Massey
  79. Melissa McCaleb
  80. Molly McCanless
  81. Adam McCook
  82. Erin McCook
  83. Paige Motes
  84. Trillissa O'Quinn (or Trilissa O'Quinn)
  85. Steifon Passmore
  86. Michi Pendelton
  87. Daryl Pendergrast (or Darrell Pendergrass, Darrell Pendergrass, Daryl Pendergrass)
  88. Eric Peterson
  89. Samantha Mayer Peterson
  90. Amy Pieroni
  91. Linda Pinnix
  92. Tom Piper
  93. Scott Platzer
  94. Andrea Porter
  95. Marti Powell
  96. Michelle Provence
  97. Clancy Ratliff
  98. Crosbie Ray (or Crosby Ray)
  99. Tim Rea
  100. Kathy Richards
  101. Jason Roberts
  102. Brooke Robinson
  103. Chris Rohling
  104. Nathan Ruffrage
  105. Alexandria Satt
  106. Rondi Nerstad Shefrey
  107. Sunshine Shumate
  108. Jenny Simpson
  109. Walt Smith
  110. Sara Snodgrass
  111. Justin Snodgrass
  112. Sean Springer
  113. Christie Snodgrass Steadman
  114. Blake Stevenson
  115. Rebecca Eve Brown Styles
  116. Ronnie Taylor
  117. Annie Thomas
  118. Erin Thomas
  119. Katherine Thompson
  120. Wesley Thompson
  121. Stacey Thompson
  122. Angela Thornton
  123. Wade Thornton
  124. Melinda VanRensselaer Thornton
  125. Joey Tittle
  126. Kerry Tolleson
  127. Amy Tomlinson
  128. Susannah Moore Torres
  129. Myles Tucker
  130. Amanda Underwood
  131. Blair Underwood
  132. Lyndsay Van Vickle
  133. Neal Vickers
  134. Brad Wallace
  135. Andrew Walter
  136. Margaret Walter-Cain
  137. Cathy Ward
  138. Scott Weaver
  139. Shannon Wells
  140. Johanna White
  141. Todd White
  142. JJ Whitten
  143. Shannon Williams
  144. Ashley Williams
  145. Kim Williams
  146. Whit Williams
  147. Matt Wood
  148. Kevin Woodis
  149. Alison (*) Woodward
  150. Matt Woodward
  151. Lewis Yuille (or Louis Yuille)
  152. Devi Zulkifli
  153. Carolyn (worked at Hickory Hills Cinemas, strawberry blond hair, might have been in Alpha Delta Pi briefly)
  154. Jen (of Jen and Jimmy)
  155. Cyd (went to Daryl's parties)
  156. Camille (Toby’s ex)
  157. Tyler (Kim's friend)
  158. Drew (of Drew and Devi)