Half.

Okay, this is embarrassing. I'm totally not a hoarder. Well, maybe I am. I'm sure I'm not.

Moving on.

I have this recurring daydream in which I pile the contents of my home onto the front lawn and edit and donate and ruthlessly purge and carry back into the house only the objects that are loved and necessary. I think I could get it down to about half. Half.

In theory, HALF sounds so very very liberating. But in practice? How do you measure? By volume? By item? I have two couches and I'm not getting rid of one. Then again, I probably wear one-fourth of my clothes. How many sweaters equals a sofa?

On the other hand, every time I go to look for a permission slip or auto registration or other mildly important slip of paper, I pitch (recycle) most of the paper I encounter on the way there. Most of the paper. How much paper - that I don't need - am I living with?

Even my wallet is a burdensome mess, so I decided to start there. I think I kept one-third of the contents, and got rid of some things I cannot explain. Like the expired credit card from a company I left eight years ago? And, who needs five pounds of pennies?

Also tackled: one bin of children's books (with the help of the children). We gave 15 away, kept 35 including 2 that my kids don't care about, but I love them and they're out of print..... so. Still, a 30% reduction isn't so bad. Especially for bookish, indoorsy folk like us.

We gave each other celebratory fist bumps and ate Valentine candy.