Progressively clean sweep my immediate environment

We thought we had trimmed. We thought we had purged. We thought we had cast off every unneeded item and insignificant piece of material belonging.

Not so, it seems.

Nearly a week of moving and where did all this crap come from? More importantly, where is it all going? Not into MY house! Did you know we have a chair with only three legs(I can fix that), parts for a car we don’t own(I can fix that, too), sheets for a bed we don’t own(makes good tablecoths or paint rags, keep it), boxes of unopened mail and various documents(don’t throw it away, it has to be shredded), 1/8th of a bucket of paint(for touch-ups), a full bottle of that mouthwash neither one of us can stand(keep it for guests), a half inflated volleyball(the dog might like to play with it), Jeff’s tap and die set(Jeff from Florida? Yes, but next time we go down I may see him and I want to give his $10 tools I borrowed 12 years ago back to him), a box of photos, letters and cards from LBW? (Life Before Wife, and there’s a whole other post coming about that one)

We are standing in our garage looking at piles of boxes wondering how two people generated so much stuff. Now a whole new sorting game begins. Now we really cut to the bone. Nothing comes into the house except is is current, useful, indespensibly sentimental, or irreplacably practical. It is so nice having the clean uncluttered space of the rooms I don’t want to start breaking energy flows with anchors of the past.

This will take a while.

is finally taking care of itself. I have packed and purged and boxed almost everything I own in preparation for the move. What I have now is stuff I really “need” (a highly subjective point of view). I’ve gotten so used to culling my personal “trash” that I think it will probably continue during the upacking phase of our move. I just won’t want to clutter up the place.

I am really down to the final items on this project. Moving to a new house will offer a chance to start new and clean, with only the things that I really believe will enhance my life and serve my purposes. Therein begins a new challenge… keeping my environment clean-swept.

to motivate you to clean. The thought of packing, moving, unpacking and finding a place for all that crap really helps draw the line on what you want vs. what you need. I have been progressive packing the last two months, and every day I clean out a drawer or closet or take a box down from the attic, I find myself less and less attatched to all the things I just couldn’t do without a year ago. Stuff that has been packed away unseen for five years… well, if I didn’t miss it before, I won’t ever. Do I really want to haul 300 lbs of magazines to the new house? No, I don’t. Just how many VCRs that don’t work do I need, anyway? None, that’s how many. At this rate I’ll get everything into one truck.

There have been moments of nostalgia as I plow through the accumulated testaments of the years: birthday cards, ticket stubs, old photos I didn’t remember keeping (some with pics of old girlfriends – oops!). Odd things I can’t imagine why I kept: fossilized jaw bone I found in the desert, a single bullet (I don’t own a gun), business cards from trade shows, sketches, notes, lists, doodles. Penthouse magazines from 1985 (why the hell did I keep those?). A lot of stuff I realized I didn’t want to let go of because “there’s nothing wrong with it!” Except if doesnt’ fit into my life anymore. It doesn’t reflect who I am or what I believe. It doesn’t serve me or add to my life. I guess that is the litmus test my “possesions” have to pass from now on.