2025 52 Card Project: Week 9: Decluttering

I noticed that my backup drive was continually failing to back up. After monkeying around with it for awhile, I took the drive and laptop into Best Buy, where they diagnosed the problem: I had waaaaaaaaay too many files on my computer.

Oh.

So I started culling files and music off the computer. It was both unnerving and satisfying, but I managed to kill several gigabytes worth of data, which meant I got the automatic backups going again.

Inspired by this, I attacked several other sources of clutter. I emptied several more boxes of legal files left in the garage by Rob (no, I'm still not done going through them). I took a box of hardback mysteries to Half-Price Books (only got $5.00 for them, but at least thirty more books are out of the house). I culled through my closet and took some bags of clothes to a thrift store (I took particular grim satisfaction in stuffing a sweater Kij had given me into the garbage bag. Why had I kept it so long? I have no idea).

I still have much too much stuff. But this week, at least, I beat it back. At least a little.

The design shows some of the things I cleared out this week. I overlaid those images with a scythe, both to indicate cutting things out of my life and as a veiled reference to the concept of Swedish Death Cleaning.

Lower center: A half-open laptop. Directly above: hanging files. Above that: stacks of books. Above that, stacks of clothes on shelves. Overlaid over all: a scythe.

Decluttering



Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.