anti-hoarding part 2

The more episodes of Hoarders I watch, the more reason I've found to toss out certain stuff from my own place.

After watching the first few episodes, yeah, I cleaned. My place wasn't in bad shape to begin with, but like I said in my last bloggo, you will feel the need to clean your place whether it needs it or not after watching that show.

Hoarding is a thing that really sneaks up on you, and it takes a show like Hoarders to really make you open your eyes and pay attention to see if you're doing it, even to a small degree. Sure enough, there were a few things I found in my apartment that I literally had no reason to keep. Absolutely none of it was full-on disaster style like the show depicts. Just little things here and there.

A shoebox full of junk

I had this shoebox in my truck where I would stuff papers in. At some point I moved this shoebox into my apartment where it sat in one spot for months. Possibly a whole year. It wasn't an eyesore as it was just a box. It's been taken care of now, but the fact it sat there that long is just plain dumb.

Useless stuff in the bathroom closet

I found a few things here that served no purpose. A rolled-up tube of toothpaste, a bottle of shampoo that had almost no shampoo in it, two old toothbrushes, a box of scented dryer sheets that had a scent I didn't even like, and a bed sheet from a set I don't even use.

That's all gone now.

Again, this is nothing hair-raising and all of it was tossed in just a few minutes, but this stuff sat for months in that closet serving absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Heck, the dryer sheets might have been two years old for all I know.

Expired things

Three things snuck up on me here.

First, a jar of instant coffee sitting on top of my microwave. Now while it's true instant coffee technically never goes bad if it's stored properly, I take no chances when it comes to that stuff. I look at the jar that's on top of my microwave and it expired in '08. Yikes. It's a good thing I didn't have a cup from that in a good long time.

Second, I remembered I had another instant coffee jar in the cabinet for "just in case" reasons (yep, hoarder thing). I knew that one was even older so I tossed that without even checking the date.

Third was a box of mint tea teabags. They have no expiration date, because like with instant coffee they can last forever if stored proper. I knew they were old and tossed them anyway.

It's really easy not to pay attention to things like instant coffee and teabags because they never exhibit signs of going bad, and that's why I missed them in the first place.

~ ~ ~

There is one thing I need to re-buy, and that's a paper shredder. This actually ticks me off because if there were a place local to here that had an industrial-grade shredder, I'd take all those stupid mailings I get that contain personal information and shred them all in 20 minutes or less.

Seriously, try to find a place where you can pay someone to use a shredder by the minute. It doesn't exist. Thought you could go to the UPS Store or FedEx Store to do it? Wrong. I know this because I've asked before. In the end, you have to pony up and buy a shredder just to do the job, so that's what I'm going to have to do. It sucks, but I have no other choice.

Have I owned paper shredders in the past? Absolutely. I've literally worn out three of them which is why I stopped buying the things in the first place. But I'm going to have to buy another just to get rid of the pile of paper I have from those dumb mailings. Oh, well.