My cousin is moving in with us next week.

This isn’t really a bad thing. She’s been going to school at the university where I work and she has a summer job this summer, but needs a place to stay, and that’s us.

She’s going to be staying in my room while I bunk with my mom. In some ways that’s a little frustrating because it means that I’m not going to be sleeping on just my schedule, but it has been the kick in the butt I needed to get going on my “get rid of stuff” goal.

In a few weeks we’ll be coming up on my twenty-nine-and-a-half-birthday and I am not even close to halfway done with my get rid of stuff goal. I started the day having gotten rid of 58 things.

I’m clearing out some drawers to make space for my cousin’s stuff and so I figured it would be the perfect chance to get rid of some of the stuff that’s making it difficult to close my dresser drawers. My top drawer included underwear that I’ve had since I started college… the first time. I threw out pajamas I haven’t worn in a long time because they make my legs so hot in the middle of the night. I went through my t-shirt drawer and got rid of t-shirts I haven’t worn in years (and not just be because they don’t fit anymore; I saved a good number of those). I tossed out jeans that have had holes in the crotch for far too long. That got me up to about 120.

And then I counted up my books. For a while now I have been sorting through the overflowing bookshelves full of books, some of which I don’t ever have any desire to read again (and a few I wasn’t real wild about the first time).

I’m nowhere near done (sense a theme here?) going through my books (it’s involved a lot of re-reading thus far) and I know I’m probably keeping two books for every one I’m donating, but what I’ve sorted thus far has me giving away 210 books. There is a thrift store in my area that I’m going to donate them to.

Deciding where to donate my “babies” has been part of why they’ve been sitting in grocery sacks on my bedroom floor for months. I want to be sure that they will go to someone that will love them and take care of them. It may seems silly, especially given the condition that some of them are in, but I believe that books are a precious, precious thing (even cheap trade-paperbacks) and should be treated with care.

I have to believe that this place that has done so much to work to rebuild a broken community will take good care of the books I love.