Trash or Treasure

My New Year's Resolutions reveal an organizational problem.  Anybody who wants every book she sees is going to have a storage problem.  This is also a problem with collecting gadgets.  But another whole problem is that my husband was a teacher for thirty years and I taught for 40 years.  Hoarding is a problem for a lot of teachers.  If a person teaches high school or college, then at least the piles will be subject oriented.  But an elementary or middle school teacher is apt to have social studies, science, and all sorts of miscellaneous stuff.  This fall it was a challenge to get through stores without buying class sets of things, mechanical pencils, ball point pencils, cool paper, colored pencils, markers...stuff.  Stickers!
So organization is an interesting challenge.  My Kindle freed up a lot of space.  I've donated car loads of books to the library to either shelve or sell to augment their budget.  But I no longer have books piled everywhere in addition to shelved on wonderful bookcases that my husband built for me.
So now I can store craft stuff on those shelves and still have a wonderful treasure trove of books.  I also don't have books open all over the house because I'm reading more than one.  The Kindle keeps up with where I am in each.
A lot of my stuff is crossover between teaching elementary school and crafts.  So sterilite containers are handy for storing things I know I will want again.  They keep them relatively dust free and organized.  They stack nicely and I can see through the sides enough that I can quickly find what I want.  But I am seriously having problems getting rid of stuff that I know is trash for me now.  I have pounds of beautiful cardstock that I used to made bookmarks for the students.  Well, I know I'm not still going to do that, but I haven't made myself pass that on to somebody still in the trenches.  I will, though.  Soon.
The gadgets I love so much, I don't always keep.  Sometimes I hate cleaning it.  Food processors are that way.  Even if all dirty parts go in the dishwasher, I probably am going to use a knife and a cutting board unless I'm canning.