Decluttering......155 on the 9th - & Story of the Dead Sticks

I've started working my way about the living/dining room, starting to the left of the doorway. I began with this bookcase - here's the before pic:

When I was done just tossing things I no longer wanted from this bookcase, here's what was left (and one of the baskets is empty):

After that, I started working on another bookcase, but I'll leave the pics of that for tomorrow, as I got tired and will finish it up then.

There was lots of wading through the contents of binder, ditching no longer needed papers and consolidating the rest.

There was also a lot of letting go of things I know, realistically, I will never use, or things which, well I can just live without!

Plus I was reminded of the story of the dead sticks. A few years ago, my friend and I both read a book from the library (Lessons in letting go : confessions of a hoarder by Corinne Grant); it was the story of one woman who began the journey of letting go of lots of clutter. (As I remember it..) at one point, she needed to move apartments, and a friend came to help her pack and move. As he's emptying the closet into boxes, he holds up something and says "Why do you have this?" She replies "Oh, that's the bouquet my boyfriend gave me at our prom!" He looks at it in confusion and says "But it's just a bunch of dead sticks!?!" And that's when she realised...yes, actually, it is just dead sticks. The bouquet had long ago dried out, and then disintegrated. You couldn't tell what it really was anymore, and it certainly served no useful purpose. After all, she could remember the good times without the dead sticks. She tossed them out, and vowed from then on, not to keep any more dead sticks.

Today I realised I had some "dead sticks." For example, in 2014 I spent a ridiculous sum on an absolutely gorgeous planner in a purple (my favourite!) leather zip-up cover with a flower on it. It was soooo pretty! Surely it would make me super organised. It didn't! I hardly used it. And of course, 2014 was a while back. There are no extraordinary notes or memories recorded in that pretty diary. Why do I still have it? It was too pretty to throw out - but it's not like I'm going to use it again!

And how about all those packets of fancy copier sheets my mother passed on to me 10 years ago, and I haven't used yet (you know, glossy photo paper, T-shirt transfers, address labels in an ugly format....)?? Why do I still have them??

Dead sticks, people, dead sticks! Time to let them go.

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Today I have decluttered the following items:
2 file boxes
6 binders
30 completed school books
7 literature resource books
13 unused school resources to pass on
1 CD-rom Essay Writing set (another dead stick - never been used!)
1 keyboard
1 mouse
2 bags of trash
1 fishbin full of paper for recycling or burning
46 random items from the shelves
6 packs special printer papers
1 clearfile
2 new accounting books (I do this digitally now)
1 hardcover book
1 graph paper refill
1 new visual diary
7 books to sell
6 dictionaries
2 books - first aid and bush craft
1 paintbrush canvas roll
1 spiral bound notebook
1 2014 (dead sticks) purple diary
10 kid's story books
3 kid's educational newspapers
1 basket
1 marble

That's 155 items and a BIG bin full of paper!

It really does feel good to let go! I feel like I'm peeling back lots of layers, to ultimately reveal what is hidden underneath - a life of calm and pleasantness.