Cleaning out before the final packing

Those of you who know us both will know that Tina is the organized one of the two of us. As much as I know I've got a tendency to pack-rat and a potential for hoarding in the future, I've always felt that Tina and the small 700 ft² (65 m² to those of you not in the US or the holdouts in Canada) condo were enough to keep me in check.

It's been 7 full years since we returned from living as expats in China, and we did move some items back with us, but I would have argued the majority of what we had in the house are newer items, and items that we actually need (want) to keep.

That said, yesterday we started going through the bedroom - Tina's nice and organized - and I'm finding paperwork that doesn't make any sense for keeping, film developing receipts mixed in with old tax documents. I've got a full drawer full of cables, cords, batteries, and software CD's to camera's and phones that we no longer own. I actually still have my old Nextel and Nokia phones that we stopped using sometime pre-2007.

I've managed to get through three drawers and one catch-all bin where under the bedroom end-table where even I was surprised at the items that were held onto. In the back of one drawer I found 11 of the cheap travel shoe shine kits that hotels give away free - all of these moved back from China with us and were promptly forgotten until they were pulled out to be thrown away today - but not before giving my shoes a quick, but not quality, polish...