Decrapification

Is that a word? It is in my house. I used to be sort of a pack rat. Now I just want less. A lot less. Less to take care of, clean, find, store, and house. Except for the part of me that doesn't.

I don't want less yarn. I don't really want less fabric. I don't want fewer books or to part with my favorite kitchen goodies. I have come around to embracing HM's idea to put all our movies and DVDs onto a server- so I can get rid of the copies that clutter a closet. I want fewer kid toys, fewer random broken things, fewer pieces of clutter.

Recently my mom, in her own frenzy of decrapification, sent me boxes of old pictures as well as an old family bible. These things are not crap- I would be quite upset to lose them- but neither are they things that I have a place for nor a way to enjoy. I also live in terror of disaster (yes, I have anxiety issues but just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after me!) so I want every photograph I have somewhere safely out on the net as well as on discs. I'd also love to be able to lighten up enough to actually allow my kids to touch their scrap books. And did I mention that mom just sent me 3 flat rate boxes full of stuff? In addition to the non-digital prints from the first 15 years of our marriage?

Enter Heritagemakers. My friend Laura found them, loved it so much she became a consultant and asked me to a party. Since I'm indebted to her for pretty much the rest of my life (for taking a crazy kid off my hands for a time, at great personal expense), I went to the party. This is a big deal because I hate those things. Tupperware, Mary K, Pampered Chef, Longaberger....loathe them all even if I sometimes like some of the stuff. I'm fairly antisocial to begin with and I'm cheap- neither things that lend themselves to being a good guest at sellabrations.

So I go and it wasn't bad. Really.

The best part: the super scanner. It can scan something like 400 pictures in 10 minutes. I think I probably have that many. Maybe more. Then I get to walk away with a flash drive filled with everything and I can make copies of it all. Publish it to my Picasa or Photobucket account, send one to my mom for safety, and encourage Miss V to work her Photoshop magic on red eyes and double chins. I can also make those cute scrapbook pages that I'm too imprecise to do out of actual paper and have things printed, bound even. And all of it without a single piece of paper, pair of squiggly scissors, cricut machine, or pack of stickers entering my house. I can make the kids books of all their pictures without worrying that they might damage them. And I can then place all those old pictures in archival boxes in the storage room over the garage and leave them there without guilt. Forever.