I had a subscription to Gardening Australia magazine for three years, and occasionally buy Better Homes and Gardens magazine. After I'd read each issue I'd tear out all the 'useful' pages and put them in a folder. This afternoon I went through the whole lot and threw out three quarters of the pages.
The problem with magazine articles is that they only provide limited information: they mostly contain nice pictures. The problem with gardening information is that I live in the tropics, but the bulk of the Australian population doesn't. Sydney and Melbourne are far from tropical - more mediterranean and temperate climates - so much of the information about what to plant when is irrelevant to me. Crikey, if I waited until Melbourne Cup Day (first Tuesday of November) to plant my tomatoes I would never have tomatoes: they are a winter crop up this way.
I've just kept a small pile of 'ideas' for if we want to do some renovating, or decorating. Just a few things. I threw out a lot that I didn't like anymore, so I'm okay with keeping a few things if I'm willing to sort through them every so often.
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I bought a new handbag yesterday from the World Vision shop. It's handmade by a lady in Ghana, and is small, light, and has a couple of pockets for my bits and pieces - like a spare nappy, and a comb. When I need to take extra stuff, I'll take an extra bag. I'll attempt to sell my oversized bag.
Susan,
ReplyDeletegrab that pile of paper you did keep and google for the same information and see what you find. You may discover that everything you could possibly want is on the internet and there is no need to keep any scraps of paper. I have been busy getting rid of all my cookbooks because there are so many sites with recipes that are much easier to search for with a search engine than and index.
Thanks, Colleen. That's a great suggestion! I might even scan them all and then just keep it all as a file on my computer.
ReplyDeleteI got rid of three quarters of my cookbooks a couple of years ago because most of what I had was just variations on a few themes, and I don't really cook much from recipes anyway - I just tend to make it up! It's time to do another cull of those now.