So, here comes the advice. One small little pill of advice.
From now on I vow to unpack at least one box a day. In fact, I should say two boxes: one from the Italy pile and one from the Brooklyn pile. I’m sure I will throw away most of the stuff in the Brooklyn pile (proving that I really should have thrown away seven-eighths of my possessions before the move).
As they say, no time like the present. So here is me opening and unpacking and *immediately* dealing *permanently* with the contents of the first two boxes:
two scary looking boxes
Before I launch into the actual unpacking and dispatching phase, let us pause to look at two features of my house: namely, what a HAPPY bookcase looks like, and what a SAD bookcase looks like.
this is what I call a happy bookcase
poor sad little bookcase
And before we move on to the boxes, one last look at the bookcase that NEEDS HELP:
a little happy, a little sad, needs some TLC
So let’s start with the Brooklyn box, the big brown one.
can you tell what's missing after editing?
Then I proceeded to do the same thing with the Italy box full of books:
can you tell what's missing on the right?
So I ruthlessly got rid of a bunch of stuff from the first box, all the old VHS tapes from the second, I threw away some books that were either damaged or smelled a little of mildew. Then finally I had a brilliant idea! A friend had told me about this great online club called PaperBackSwap.com. Here is how it works:
- You join, for free;
- You post ten books that you are willing to give away, for which you get two credits (one credit = one book you are entitled to request, for free);
- If there are any books among the ten that you have listed that someone else has requested they ask you to confirm that you’re willing to send it, you say yes, they give you a preprinted label with the address of the requester and your return address at the top left;
- You print out the label. If the book is small enough, you use the label itself to wrap it. If not, you go to the post office and get an envelope, then stick the label on with tape;
- At this point you go to the counter and YOU pay the postage — it’s media rate so it’s very cheap, about $2.23 per book;
- The beauty of this is that it functions entirely on good will. You pay when you send the books to others, but they pay when they send them to you.
I’ve already sent 6 books since I signed up, and that was only a few days ago, like four! I’m earning lots of credits. As soon as I think of something I want I’ll go on PaperBackSwapl.com and look for it. If it’s there, I get a free book! How cool is that?
If you enjoyed this post, this is the perfect time to sign up for free updates via RSS or via email and while you're at it, sign up for our free Newsletter.
