Out the Door this Week: Introduction

My husband and I are engineers. We see a practical use for almost everything. As a result, we have a small collection of stuff that is not of any use to us, but we can't throw out.

I was recently inspired by a library copy of It's All too Much on my desk. I had flipped through it on a couple occasions, but wasn't really into the regimen of cleaning up and throwing out that Walsh proposes. It did, though, get me thinking about all the stuff we have hanging around that is waiting to get sold or given away. I have also been lurking on Ramit's $1000 in 30 days challenge and have been meaning to follow his tip #3: Sell something on ebay.

So, we are engineers. We do everything very deliberately and work best if we have a plan to go by---a schedule. For instance, we were having trouble remembering to change our sheets on a regular basis. My husband combat this by setting a reminder on our Google Calendar and we now change our sheets regularly. That got me thinking: we can do the same with our not-useful-to-us stuff.

We've gone through periodic spasms of getting rid of stuff, but there was never a long term commitment. Last night I proposed that we get rid of one thing a week---either by giving it away (via the "free stuff" section on Craig's List or freecycle) or selling it (via Craig's List, ebay or similar)---for the next year.

My husband liked the idea and set up a Google Calendar reminder. I figured others might be interested in this effort and a blog posting on what we are giving away or selling may help keep us on track for our goal.

Each week I'll post what we are getting rid of and how we got it out the door.