Singing for a smaller me

I finally got rid of some dead weight this weekend. And by dead weight, I mean most of those freaking clothes piling up in my guest room waiting to be donated or gifted to friends. After the Great Clothing Purge of March 2010, it just started piling up in there with promises from friends to come by and figure out what they wanted. It took a while to happen.

That great event finally occurred this weekend when I hosted a "Girly Day" at my house Sunday. This is the second one we've (me and my friends) held, but it's starting to become something of a tradition. So, every couple of months one of us hosts said day at their home and with liberal application of your chosen drink, there is much nail polishing, hair styling, gossiping (lots and lots of gossiping), and - as in the case of this weekend - swapping of clothing.

Back in March, after the First Great Clothing Purge, the guest room looked something like this:




Bear in mind this doesn't include the additional pieces that made it into our guest room over the next two months. Part of me wishes I'd taken a picture before yesterdays ransacking, but - at the same time - it's better to just move on. (I'll take a picture of the remnants, but I'd say of the original pile maybe a quarter remains).

To give you an idea of just how much clothing I gave away and just how much clothing I *had*: one friend took four large shopping bags full of clothes, there was enough for people to take away an additional five or six large shopping bags, and I *still* have 20% of it left (and a pile of 10 - 15 shirts to send to my mom cause she's losing weight too).

Can we say clothes horse? Yep. That would be me. I think I might have a bit of a problem. Fortunately, I'm determined to never become a hoarder of any type, so with my closet significantly reduced in content, I'm heading in the right direction, and have no intention of letting it get that bad again. Ever.

I had all kinds of grand intentions, too, of making healthy snacks from the two Hungry Girl Cookbooks I picked up a few weeks back, but that never materialized. No, instead, I've added another food to the list of "I just can't have it around the house or I'm gonna gorge myself sick on it": Tortilla chips. Oh. My. God. I put out celery sticks with homemade low-fat ranch dressing however, but the tortilla chips (and egg rolls) called my name. And just so you know, the only thing I provided was the celery and ranch, the rest was brought in.

Actually, looking at my weekend food consumption, it could have been a lot worse. Still, there are a few things I need to work on in the weekends to come:

• Less salt. Holy cow, I'm retaining so much water from this weekend it's nuts.


• More fruits and vegetables. Yeah, I might have had five total servings of fruits and vegetables over the entire weekend. Might have. Gotta work on that.


• Less coffee, more water. I've got the water drinking thing down pat Monday thru Friday, but give me a weekend and several pounds of coffee on hand and it's caffeine city for me, baby.


• And, although it's not food related, I need to get more exercise. We went to Maker Faire on Saturday and walked a couple miles worth around the San Mateo Event Center, yes, but I prefer something a little more strenuous in terms of intenstiy.