In brief bursts, I've spent the last few weeks clearing my house of clutter. The seven years in my humble home in Eagan have been the longest period of time I've spent at any residence since I moved away from the farm when I was 18. Living alone in my three-bedroom rambler, I haven't exactly been wanting for space, which hasn't given me much incentive to get rid of shit I don't need. Pay stubs from my minimum wage job in college, boxes from computer peripherals I threw away or sold years ago, gas station receipts from 1997 -- I have no fucking clue why I've hung onto any of it, and the growing collection disorganized boxes and chaotic piles of junk have made it nearly impossible to find the things I actually need when I need them. I'm tired of living in my own (non-biological) filth.

Phase I of Project Make Shit Go 'Way Now was to drag every overflowing box and drawer from my master bedroom and office and sort through every last scrap of paper and loose screw. That phase resulted in the disposal of an estimated 60 to 90 gallons of trash at the curb and 10 to 20 gallons of financial and other sensitive documents burned in the fire pit over beers and booze. The small percentage of items I wished or needed to keep were sorted into several piles in my living room. Financial documents, house-related documents and receipts, insurance and medical documents, photos and keepsakes, tools, computer parts, adapters, and cables, office items, and other assorted shit stayed in these piles for several weeks. The other day, I finally started putting these items into several stackable plastic drawers, folders, and other items purchased to aid in organizing my whatnotteries and bric-a-shit.

In addition to the trash, there are a lot of perfectly useful items for which I no longer have a need. These will all go to Goodwill. The most useless of these items are the boxes and boxes of toys I have collected over the years. Some I compulsively purchased, foolishly thinking they would increase in value. The following is a small but shameful sampling of unopened Star Wars toys that I took to Goodwill yesterday. Most of these items are worth exactly what I paid for them -- or far less-- in 1998 and 1999. These do not include the toys I opened and used for the purposes of interior decorating until I came to in a rush of snap maturity -- at age 27. Since then, these toys have accumulated dust in my closet.

Bear witness to my shame, bitches!