practice Discardia

I have less stuff now, the house is a lot easier to live in, all in all, my life is better than it was this time last year.
I may be returning to this some time in the future, but for now I feel that I’ve done what I can.

Thanks for the team spirit!

Even after doing this for what seems like forever, there is still more to do! After having had carpet laid, we have moved all our upstairs stuff to the dining room (aka storage – agh!). I’m reluctant to move all that stuff back up here, so I think another pass at getting rid of some of this is worth it. I am also coming to the realisation that we REALLY need a shed for all the gardening and DIY detritus. It never ends!

I have a player with far too many songs on. I love my music, but there is stuff on there I never listen to. Last Tuesday I started going through the huge playlist alphabetically, taking a letter a day and throwing out anything either me or my husband were not crazy about. It was all going well until last night and I dropped the player in the (clean, thank goodness) toilet. ARGH and haha! So off it went to the water heater cupboard, the battery taken out (when I remembered about a hour later) with a towel. Today I went by a shoe shop and asked them for some silica gel sachets and put the player and the sachets in a ziploc bag. Fingers crossed, because there is some awesome music on there!
Discardia will continue after this interrupion!

Edit – it totally worked, and even better – the pause button works again. Unexpected bonus!

but all the stuff that didn’t sell at the car boot sale went to the cat shelter charity shop. Good stuff, too, but not for me any more. The house is looking a bit more welcoming bit by bit as I reclaim space from STUFF!

My car has been sitting in the drive unused for the best part of a year. A guy came to the door and asked if it was for sale and now it’s gone! That was the easiest bit of discardia ever – lucrative too!

All I will say about this is that going through receipts and money related documents is very dull. I can bear only 20 minutes of this a day, but at least I will have some fun shredding it all. I treated myself to an electric shredder to make sure I do this more often, and as childish as it is, it works. It’s just the same compulsion as pressing the button at the pedestrian crossing, everyone wants a go.

I am going through all the stuff I haven’t properly unpacked since moving in and this time instad of asking myself what I want to get rid of, I am asking myself what do I really want to keep. This is getting rid of a lot more stuff, so there is evidently a trick to being ruthless!

I have given back things and given away stuff to people who would appreciate it more. It’s still slow progress for now, but there ois progress none the less. Once I finish the decorating, I am going to devote a lot more attention to this.

I was going to add an entry about how I have been letting this goal slide and then I realised I have been spending the last week making my living space better by DIYing and I spent a few hours yesterday cleaning the whole house. Gosh darn it, if that’s not Discardia, I don’t know what is!

The jury is out on the Easter weekend carboot sale. It depends on weather and tiredness.

The car is full of rubbish to go to the tip and we now have a great big space in the front room where it sat for what seems like time immemorial. A big bag of clothes went to the charity shop, too. Still remaining are two piles of assorted junk to carboot, but patience, it will happen soon! Ebaying and amazoning are still underway and overall it feels like a slow but definite tectonic shift.

Also discarded – a work clothes rut. I have been wearing different clothes this week and feeling that I’m shaking things up a bit. People were shocked at first, but I want to discard also the way people habitually see me.

Generally I’m trying to open my mind a bit – try a different way of doing things, trying to let go of old ways of thinking about stuff and trying to act without being self conscious and worrying what people will think. Yes, I am trying, and as the Bees song says, sometimes I even succeed. Let Spring In!

edit – the tip stuff has gone, Gone, GONE! Goshdarn, I sure do love that tip.