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cull, baby,
cull:
living room edition by Yee-Fan Sun | 1 2 3 continued from page 2 With your surfaces cleared and tidied, time to turn to your bookshelves, entertainment center, and other open nooks. Look through your books, CDs, DVDs and videotapes, and pull out anything that you can safely say you have no interest in ever reading through, listening to, or watching ever again. That book on the making of the atomic bomb from some college history course, the one you never bothered to read even back when it might have behooved you to do so, that En Vogue CD you "won" at your middle school raffle -- these are not items that are making your life easier, happier, or more fun in any way, shape, or form. So stop hanging on to them -- into the donate/sell box they go. The best part is that you can bring these goods to a used bookstore or record store; while it's likely that you won't be able to sell everything you cart in, you'll probably be able to get some trade-in or cash for at least a portion of it … providing you with an opportunity to buy new books, music and movies that you might actually enjoy. There's only one more thing to deal with: those knick knacks. Now before your inner packrat starts hyperventilating at the mere thought that I'm going to tell you to purge your beloved Buffy collectibles display, relax: I'm a lover of myriad useless objects myself, and I'm not going to make you completely de-personalize your nest just for the sake of a slightly more streamlined room. I am, however, going to suggest you give all that stuff a serious assessment. Do you really love all the cow-print paraphernalia dotting your bookshelves, or was it just something you sort of liked way back when you were thirteen, which your family continues to insist is "your thing" by supplementing your collection at every gift-giving opportunity? Do you really need 50 snowglobes gathering dust on your entertainment center, or could you pick out ten of your very favorites to make the same kitschy cool statement instead, rotating new ones in whenever you get bored? Is it really better to have a tiki mug strewn in every corner of the room, or could you consolidate them into a single location for maximum tiki impact and a less haphazard look? If each and every one of those non-utilitarian doodads is there because you genuinely can't bear not to gaze upon them in every corner of the room and on a daily basis, so be it: they serve a function, even if that function is only apparent to you. But if there's anything that you're not deeply attached to, it's probably just taking up space that could be better used to highlight other goodies that you love a whole lot more. After a good weekend morning or so of sorting and shuffling and purging, you'll find yourself with cleared-off coffee tables you can actually set a cup of tea upon, shelves that can actually accommodate those finds you bring back from your next thrift store excursion, end tables where you can set a remote control without worrying it'll get consumed by the chaos -- yes, a living room you can actually live in. Kind of nice, isn't it? o check
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