get rid of all my clutter

I have serious emotional attachment to my towels and linens. I can’t part with them! Sure, it was easy to toss out all of the ragged, torn towels; but want about the perfectly good stuff. There only fault was being a color scheme that no longer suited my bathroom! OK. I hate to admit it, but I pulled all my towels out of the cupboard three days ago and washed everything. Then I sorted them by color set. And then I stared at them for the past 48 hours trying to decide which ones to toss. I had something like 58 different towels. It’s just my hubby and me! Sure we have the odd guest, but get real… who needs that many towels! I love the pure white; I love the gray. Why do I have purple and green. But they are in great shape; how does someone just throw them out?

ohhhh, therapy required!

I am having a difficult time this morning moving through some of my “hot spots”. A hot spot for me are items or groups of items with emotional attachment. I was surprised by the feelings I had when I started sorting through a large bin of stored table linens – table cloths, napkins, tea towels, etc. I began willing enough quickly tossing odd napkins aside; but I soon found myself reaching over and pulling a few of them back. “These will look great in a bread basket” “I can use this as a table cover”. I just couldn’t bring myself to give away any of my perfectly good linens.

Honestly, I think I change my table cloth about four times a year; Christmas, Easter, Thankgiving and then I have my everyday one. How do I rationalize keeping seven to ten different sets?

Then there are the “tea towels”. For some reason I began buying cute tea towels on our trips to the UK; but I have never used them. They are kept in a drawer, still in plastic wrap – I am saving them – but for what? I have trouble the the whole “keep sake” “souvenier” thing – but that is a completely other story.

Today, I am going to toss all of the pristine tea cloths into the washer and put them into regular use. But I am not sure how to move past the table linens problem.

Yesterday I filled a large trash can with just crap I had in dresser drawers. I started a “give away” box, but at the end of the day it was still empty. This stuff wasn’t even worth passing on!