What is enough? - the tote bag demonstration of lagom

I was washing the tote bags we use for groceries the other day and got thinking about how many we have in the cars and house. There are only 5 that I use regularly - 2 for grocery shopping, 1 for gym clothes, 1 for small item shopping, and 1 for library books. Hubby really should keep one in his car too for the occasions he stops for groceries. That would be a total of 5.

Then there are all of the others. 3 canvas bags (2 of which I used to take when I walked to the farmer's market regularly), 1 vinyl tote I used to use for work before I retired, and 3 other grocery totes that I don't like as much. In case you weren't counting that is 6 totes that aren't used regularly.

Why do I have them? I either used them in the past and since they are small they have stuck around or they were gifts and I have trouble letting go of gifts even if I don't use them.

They could go to good use elsewhere. We sell tote bags at the Friends of the Library book sales and the thrift store I like to support sells them as well.

So here is a situation where I could almost cut in half the number of items we have in a category without any daily impact. I could actually cut it further and not have separate gym and library bags but I do like having them.

So I'm letting go of 5 extra bags. I'm taking inspiration today from Janet at The Gardener's Cottage who wrote Having just enough and only keeping what I am happy to see and actually use in the life I live right now.

I'm very happy with our decluttering progress - 110 items out in 14 weeks. The best one was getting the fence in the woods down finally!