Free at last!

I knew I had too much “stuff”. But until I moved last summer, I never realized just how much over the top it was. It’s now one year later and I am still unpacking boxes. That’s just wrong. It has become so apparent to me that the more stuff you own… the more the stuff owns you.

It’s bad enough if you keep it fairly well organized. But if it has turned to clutter, you have sold yourself into slavery.

Why would I say that?

Think about the amount of time it takes to maintain a mountain of possessions. Just cleaning it (and cleaning around it) takes forever. Not organized? How many hours have you spent looking for something? How many dollars have you spent buying something you have but can’t find? How frustrated has it made you?

That is where I found myself earlier this year. My office piled high with boxes of stuff. Unorganized. Missing things I needed. Spending hours fooling around with “things”.

Enough was enough. I began to hate those boxes. And in that I found the ability to purge and organize.

There was an added blessing in that a Christian mission we sponsor a missionary thru (Africa For Jesus) is opening a thrift shop to support their work. That gives me the additional motivation I need to keep going when it feels like my head will explode from making decisions.

So I am sorting and boxing up a lot of things to donate to the thrift shop. Instead of a mountain of boxes full of ‘whatever’, I now have a mountain of boxes that are empty waiting for recycling.

My goal is to have the house box free and organized by the end of this month. That’s 10 days. I can do this!

Does that mean I will be done? Not quite. There is still the shed to deal with. But because the size and weight of the items out there – and all the shelves that must be built to hold tools and seasonal items – that will be worked on when Himself gets home AND the weather cools off.

A friend recently asked me what I will do with myself once I am done decluttering. I have to smile at the possibilities. I’ll finally have time to scrapbook, put together photo books, make jewelry, start experimenting with recipes again, garden, working on my bonsai or head off to a movie or class without fretting over what needs to be done.

Or I could take a nice nap!