Happy Friday!

Here we are at week two of September’s personal challenge. For those new to personal challenges, they are tasks that I give myself to either better my own life or those of others. For the overall details of this month’s challenge, check out this link.

Week 2 is focused on books and movies that I have. To be honest, I currently do not have a TV or any media player. I think that CDs should be able to fall in this category as well.

Items such as these can be donated to either libraries, second hand stores or sold online. Depending on what you have, you may be able to get a good chunk of change for it.

When going through my books, my thoughts were really on what I would read again. I have kept a lot of textbooks while going to school to reference in future classes. To be honest, in psychology things become so out dated incredibly quickly that I never did reuse them. I would feel guilty to provide the now incorrect information to anyone so decide to put these books in my recycle bin. Other books, such as novels and cookbooks that I will not refer to or ever read will be going to the library.

For my CDs and deciding what I wanted to keep, I took into consideration where I have the ability to listen to them. The only CD player I have is in my vehicle. A lot of what I had are not things that I care to listen to when I drive. For example, string quartets create some amazing sound but it just isn’t something I enjoy while cruising down the highway. This made it much easier to cut down on my already withered down collection.

My movies were probably the most difficult part for me. I love Gene Kelly movies but I have no where to watch them! I decided that I would give up all but one of those movies (Singing in the Rain) so that I still satisfied the sentimental factor, while clearing the shelf space. A lot of the other movies were an easy decision to get rid of. The library here is amazing for its collection of DVDs and Blu-rays. If I ever got a player I could most definitely borrow one for free from there with my library card. However, I do have Netflix and it seems to keep my movie appetite satisfied just fine.

One thing that I think people do, is feel the need to fill their shelves from end to end. If you are one of these people I suggest heading over to Pinterest and looking at interior design pictures. Most of the shelving that you will see there are displaying items, rarely completely full. Sometimes having a full shelf takes away from what is on that shelf… kind of like the trees getting lost in the forest. Having just a few books on a shelf makes them less overwhelming and appear more on display and special.

Let me know how your personal challenges are going and what you find the most difficult to get rid of!