Go away, stuff.

I have a fear of being trapped in stuff. This might have something to do with growing up in my house, where the chair-to-family-member ratio is about 8:1 and the book-to-family-member ratio is probably in the neighborhood of 175:1. It also comes from moving into three (and out of two) apartments in three cities in the last three years. Nothing makes you realize how much crap you have that you don't need more than moving. I love getting rid of things and there's something satisfyingly freeing about throwing bags for the Goodwill in my trunk. Yesterday, I went through my bookshelf and my closet and got two big grocery bags out the door and out of my life.
Books are one thing I have a hard time parting with, but most of the ones I dumped were either freebies or were for college classes or were fluffy, silly books to begin with. I'm pretty ruthless with my clothes, although I have a bad habit of saying "Oh, but I could re-sew this into something else!" about items that have nice fabric or some other vaguely appealing feature. However, I have a lot less storage space in this apartment than in my last one, so it just doesn't make sense to keep a bunch of clothes I don't really wear and don't have a place to store.

So with two big bags of stuff gone, I felt justified buying a flannel shirt and a jumper and a few other fall things from Target. AND...finally spending a $20 Amazon gift card. Cubic-foot for cubic-foot, still a net loss. I got four books. Two novels (Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann and Little Bee by Chris Cleave) and two Christian-y books (Crazy Love by Francis Chan and A Praying Life by Paul Miller). I will be sure to let you all know if they're good.