I believe I may have mentioned this before, but we have too much stuff. Too much stuff for two people who want to live a simple life where their weekends are not spent dusting someone else’s memories.
I am going to approach my family and ask their help in ridding myself of some of the items my parents kept. Not the jewellery, or the quilts my mother made, or the vases I saw on our childhood home’s shelves. But the detritus. Stuff they couldn’t get rid of themselves. Because sometime someone valued it. If I can put a layer of family between myself and the shedding of this stuff I will be relieved and happy.
Last Tuesday we took all our clothes and went through them item by item. We kept some in the little closet here at the rental. We threw some away that were pretty thrashed. We put some away in bins that were out of season. And we gave away a shed load. It felt so good to shove those bags into the clothing bin outside the fire station. We also gave away lots of fat, lovely hangers. Too fat to fit into the closet. Skinny plastic ones from now on.
Then we put all our clothes back in the closet with the hangers pointed point-end out. When we wear what’s on the hanger we turn it around so the round side is out. That way when we go to pack up after this summer we can see what we didn’t wear and give it away.
We must rid ourselves of this stuff. As Dave Bruno says:
Stuff is not passive. Stuff wants your time, attention, allegiance. But you know it as well as I do, life is more important than the things we accumulate.
The Lady Who Lives Down the Lane 