1999 as in the year or the number of boxes? Yes and yes. Both.

In our Mission to Minimize our possessions, one of our most arduous household tasks was to go through the dozens of storage boxes in our garage which haven’t been opened in years (literally, we had been hoarding some since 1999). In these boxes, we found a ridiculous amount of stuff. Boxes that we previously deemed to keep “forever until the end of time” caused us, now, to seriously question our adolescent judgement. Our garage was absolutely full of containers housing too many “sentimental” objects to number, too many things that we will never use, and taking up entirely too much space.

Trust me, I’m a complete sucker for sentiment, but some of the things we found were knickknacks for which we couldn’t even remember the source. A bunch of pennies strewn about a box classified as “important to keep” really could be put to better use in the kids’ piggy banks. (Were these, perhaps, magic pennies?). Apologies to whoever it was that gave us a rainbow terra cotta elephant plate a decade ago which didn’t make the cut. Thank you for the wishes that accompanied said plate. The good news is that the plate will soon find its way into the hands of its rightful owner who is looking for just such a purchase at Goodwill. (And so will the hundreds, if not thousands, of miscellaneous items that made their way to the Goodwill Express near us. I’m actually embarrassed at this point at the frequency of our visits to the donation center. I always imagine the employees rolling their eyes when they see our car – I know, it’s ridiculously egotistical to think they remember us so well. The poor souls probably just remember our crap. [For the record, we’re aware the Goodwill is not the most socially conscious enterprise of its kind, but when you have an intense need to purge your possessions immediately, we convince ourselves that the lavish car driven by the CEO matters less than someone walking into the store and being able to excitedly purchase a $50 doodad for $2.]).

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