Yesterday, All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away

Yesterday was spent cleaning our house (not the little house I'm in, the main one). My sister got her room cleaned (and as organized as she can...such a little room for too many years worth of collecting) and it looks great. Then the living room and dining room got cleaned as well. A trip was even made to donate things to the thrift store and my car was almost full.

As my mom pointed out, it feels good to come home to a clean house. You feel like you can breathe and you don't have that list running through your head. (My bedroom needs some cleaning still as well. I still haven't gotten that all sorted out.)

I love purging. Yes, I have admitted to being a shopaholic before. I love the thrill of finding something and owning something new, but that soon wears off and something else must be bought to obtain that 'high' again. Purging is something entirely different. You're letting go of a burden. No where to put it? Don't want it and it's still good? Then donate it. We give to Savers. They take anything and everything, even broken televisions because they train people to fix them. We've been turned away from Salvation Army. Goodwill has gone through boxes being picky about what to take (the nerve!). We don't give trash. We give perfectly good items that someone else will buy. And Savers accepts donations until 9pm, so we can do our cleaning in the day light and bring things over when we're done, instead of having it sit there until we recharge.

It's difficult not to save something for later. As a crafter, I feel everything needs to be saved because you never know when I'll need something for a project. But a person has to draw the line somewhere. As I move my stuff out of the shed and back with me, I am purging. I purged when it went in. I purged while it was still in the shed. And I will purge when it comes back. It can take that long to decide whether you would actually like to keep something or not. And I don't like the idea of saving something for a future I'm not sure will ever come (ex: my sister has a hope chest. I'm not so sure I'll ever get married, so why not use it now?).

I want to enjoy the things I've bought and not pack them away. And I don't want to pack things into a shed, never to see again, or only to see once in a blue moon. There are things I admit that I would pack away, such as diaries that are full up, baby clothes, and even some scrap books I've done. But I don't want to pack away an entire kitchen for "one day". Let me enjoy it now.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But as someone who has had way too much stuff before, stuff I've never used, stuff I've wasted money on only to get rid of it, I have felt that burden of having stuff in sheds that I know is there but I'll never be able to get to, never use, or not sure I wanted to keep in the first place. Every little thing I get rid of makes me feel a smidge free-er. I do want to own stuff, but I don't want to be defined by it. After all, why own things that I won't remember what was there if the whole shed got swallowed up by the ground?