Clean up all the clutter!

I'm reading a book titled Throw Out Fifty Things: Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life by Gail Blanke. The idea here is that clutter makes you feel like crap. If you throw it out, you feel liberated. A pleasant side effect is that your mind also tends to clean itself up.

I'm totally into cleaning and throwing stuff out. Unfortunately, Cindy's the opposite. She's a bit of a pack rat. Last night I told her I got her a book from the library and I showed it to her. She read the title and laughed at me.

First, I'm amazed that the book is so long: 200 pages. I'm skimming it. Do I really need to read 200 pages of this? Sure, it's a good idea. But a whole book? There were 20 holds on it at the library and Amazon readers give it 4 stars. So apparently it's successful, and needed in the world.

(A side issue: I've noticed a lot of books centred around one, single, common-sensed idea. I don't think this is a great trend. Books should have tons of good and interesting ideas. But I suppose in this day and age of short attention spas, these are the kind of books demanded by consumers.)

Second, the "50 things" actually means "50 groups of things". In other words, you can't just throw out 50 CDs. That only counts as 1 thing.

Finally, I'm still amazed at how much stuff we have in our house. Specifically our basement. I can't believe that that stuff fit in our last (small) apartment in downtown Vancouver. I'm baffled.