organize my life

Living with less things that I don’t use, buying less groceries and eating them all, even if it means eating spaghetti and salmon for breakfast. now i’ll concentrate on organizing my time and leaving enough time for myself for exercise, nature, reading, writing, etc.

oh my, what an emotional process to sort through your “stuff”; drawers and boxes of photos, memorabilia, old clothes a size too small, sundries you may need one day. I am down to the last six boxes that were first-in-last-out, located at the back of the basement storage area, representing the lot that I accumulated the most years back. The house is empty save a few pieces of staging furniture for it’s eventual sale. The garage is now tarmak for things going to the next residence, things going to the resale store and one table still to sell on craig’s list. The longer i live out of a small bag, a gym bag, a laptop and file bag and an oversized purse in and out of my car and the more often i sleep here and there (at the old house, in a friend’s guest room, at a new house) the more i realize that maybe i really need far less than i thought i did. what if i just kept weeding out my personal possessions? Keep a couple pans, a few plates, not 25 years of kitchen accumulation. I feel like without all these props around me, I could effectively just disappear, evaporate! Like the feeling I didn’t exist unless I had debt. Debt and things have legitimized my existance, what a sad state we have convinced ourselves of. If I had less stuff, I’d have more time and money and be able to work on my creative ideas more and interact in a non-hurried way with the family and friends I care about. This picture shows how I stuffed my house with things. This was the dining room that I made into a second office.

We had a yard sale then took excess stuff to a couple of modern day trading posts for consignment, then another load to goodwill. The operative word is ENOUGH! Once you have enough, then stop and enjoy, don’t keep trying to acquire more. Buy whole foods and not things in plastic containers. Go easy on the accumulation of paper and the things that need filing. Simplify! Pay some payments online, walk more, go across town less. I still have a lifetime of photos to organize and some old paperwork, but it’s getting better!

start methodically going around the house and cleaning out, removing what isn’t usefull or meaningful anymore. gather this stuff for a garage sale or bring it to a resale store for consignment. work on cleaning out the car and organizing the paperwork.

well, i had a garage sale and another one this week to remove the extras from the house. my son and i cleaned up the storage room and he’s been taking things to the recycling center and dump. we put a free pile out in front of our house and most everything went! i filed my big stack of papers yesterday. I thought it was going to take me a week and a half and I did most of it in a day! Yippee. There’s still more, but progress has been made!

work on filing until the paper is either in a current file or being recycled!

Looking around, I see that I get overwhelmed and stymied. It’s best to make small, do-able efforts. I’ll start with the storage room downstairs. I’ll remove stuff that is for the garage sale or for donation. I’ll box stuff that needs to be stored and ask that the boys help me remove items from downstairs that don’t belong to us.

i’ll start with the basement storage room because that is the most messy. i’ve learned to put free things out on the lawn and post a craig’s list ad, you won’t believe how many things go away, yippee! i purchased 6 storage boxes and i’ll purge things that i don’t need, keeping other things in labeled boxes. I’ll also bring resale items to the local consignment store to make a few bucks rather than try to have a garage sale (which takes a lot of energy). After the basement, i’ll work on the kitchen. the boys and i already did the garage, well, at least phase one.