the giraffe life

I'm still working on cleaning out the spare bedroom. Though no one consistently uses the room, we have a dresser in there because it matches the bed. Many of the drawers have gradually been filled over the years and now I'm trying to clean them out . . And I came across two bags of old cards and letters. (I have another bag that I'm currently filling, which made me forget about these two.) I reread them and stirred up lots of good memories. Some went in the trash because they were just plain cards that someone had signed their name to, but I kept all the special ones with a message inside. So I thought - I'll put them in an empty plastic box so they can be stacked neatly in the closet.  The only problem is that the containers don't hold nearly as much as I thought they would! I don't think I could possibly toss any more - so tomorrow I'm off to buy another container. Do you save cards?

One of my December goals was to clean out a few rooms in my house. Usually I'm pretty brutal with deciding what to keep/donate/recycle/trash, but this bookshelf is presenting some problems.  It's got about 10 years worth of National Geographic magazines.  In the early years, I recycled some of them and only kept the issues I really enjoyed. That somehow morphed into keeping every issue. Early last year, I ran out of room on this shelf, so I moved some things around on the shelf below it to accommodate the growing pile of magazines.  But now I'm going through the whole room with a critical eye, and I really can't think of any strong reasons to keep them. I look through a few of them maybe once a year, and occasionally dole them out when people come over ("Oh, you like to visit beaches at night? Well National Geographic did a great story about  phosphorescent plankton that you'll love"). The articles are so well written (and cover such a wide range...

I just read a great post over at Economies of Kale . She went through all her clothing and tallied up exactly how much she has of each type (similar to this guy , but not as extreme). It has inspired me to do the same :) But first, here's some pictures of where I store my clothes. Almost all of my tops and sweaters are in this closet (the baskets up top are for sheets and out of season clothes): In the spare bedroom's closet, I hang all the clothes that are too tempting for my cats - anything with dangly bits or lace edging, and long dresses. I keep jeans, shorts, hoodies, and pajamas in my dresser drawers (my husband and I share a dresser); socks and underwear are kept in my nightstand.  On to the tallies: 73 Tops Tank tops: 9 Short sleeve shirts: 28 Long sleeve shirts: 13 (+1 jersey - I'll give you one guess as to  which team ) Sweaters: 17 (a popular Christmas gift) Hoodies: 5 34 Bottoms Jeans: 5 Capris: 2 Shorts: 5 (+1 skort that I should probably ...