Purging

It’s not what you think. Although I once told my doctor I thought I could lose weight by purging, because I like to eat too much to be anorexic. He said “Not a big fan of the purging”.

So enough about me.

I was in Tacoma last week, spending some fun filled days purging the “hoarding room”.

 

 

Actually, this is what it looked like in 2010, and to be honest, Debbie and Grampa had cleaned it up. A little. There was a bit more floor space when I got there last week. But there was still lots of paper. Lots….of…..paper.

I lost count of the 30 gallon bags of shredded material/recycling, but suffice it to say, we single handedly created at least one ream of recycled paper thereby saving a hectare of rain forest.  Touché Angelina Jolie.

So, after day one, from AM to PM we got this far.

   

See the giant shredder there, last picture, right side? We had that baby running so hot it would stop mid shred. Martha would fan it  a while, and pretty soon it would suck up the paper, and then start again. Look at the size of that thing. Super duper. And it wasn’t nearly big enough. We thought that next time (I shudder to even think there might be a next time) we’ll hire the giant truck shredder. Although even they might be daunted by the task.

But you can see surface and floor space. We measured progress by floor space.

Then, at the end of day 3 (and a half) mission was accomplished.

Before:

After:

Just compare those pictures.

And just look how happy I am

And, after another day and a half, we had a few more bags of clothes and what not.

Actually, at the end of the day, there were twice this many bags and more stuff on the bench, but I had a flight to catch and couldn’t properly document. Sorry.

There was a moment of fun. It was fun to see my parents-whom I took no pictures of because they were supposed to be busy cleaning, but they weren’t. And it was fun to see my sisters, who I didn’t personally take any pictures of because we were too busy cleaning.

But we did get a group photo of the group we went out with during our 3 hour reprieve on Friday. It was Madrona and we went over to the market, then met up with a some knitterly folks for Japanese dinner.

That’s us on the left, Debbie, Martha and me. Then on the right, Michelle, Nancy, Julie and Angela. There was also a small fire in the restaurant while we were eating, which was exciting. They didn’t need the fire though, because the food was delish.

And when I returned home to sunny Minnesota (in the dark), I had a bunch of furniture that Debbie had shipped my way to contend with. I was so excited I immediately threw out 4 bags of clothes. And I’m not done purging yet.

So, how was everyone else’s weekend?