One old sock one cracked mug one pair of outgrown pants one set of unused silver One full-on ensemble of antique dining room furnishings worth their weight in baby pandas and the dreams of dead people One of anything now unloved still here will weigh you down will hold you back Will fill the space [...]
decluttering
I’ve somewhat neglected the removal of digital clutter thus far in my quest, as I’m home amongst the physical stuff for now and will be removed from it for 2+ weeks while I’m on the road. I did take some putter-y, relaxation time to declutter my music files over the past weekend, though, and as [...]
Earlier in this hellish undertaking, I tossed off a remark about wanting treats, and wondered aloud what form they should take. Should they be consumables and services, things like journals and soaps, massages or coaching sessions? Stuff that I can use and enjoy, but that doesn’t stick around and add to the problem I’m working [...]
My favorite declutter types, Karen Rauch Carter (whose book I wrote about), Brooks Palmer (whose book and workshop I wrote about) and Karen Kingston (whose book I really need to get around to reviewing here), all use one common descriptor to characterize the nature of clutter: sticky. “Sticky” as in it sticks to what you [...]
And on the Seventh Day, the Lord said, “Clear that damn clutter off your calendar.” And so I did. And in its place, the Lord spitballed an idea for an uncharacteristically short, ultra-meta post. And it was good. xxx c Image by atomicjeep via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
A lot of the feedback I’ve been getting on my wackadoodle, up-and-down journey through divesting has centered around the overwhelm factor, which makes sense: getting rid of anything is hard for a lot of us, and a kind of paralysis can set in when you’re getting rid of a TON of stuff. I had a [...]
And now, over a week into this little adventure, we come to the question of “why.” Why spend one’s time weeding through old objects, rather than working on creating new ones? Why toss what there is room to keep? What one might need, sometime, later on? What is a perfectly good book/recipe/dress/idea/your-clutter-here? For me, I [...]
The hardest book reviews to write are about the books that, for whatever reason, make your heart beat most wildly. These may not even be the books you enjoy the most; you may enjoy these books least of all, if that makes any sense. The things that touch you are not necessarily elegant nor exquisitely [...]
From the almost universally stunned reactions to my current wave of decluttering, especially around the family photos, which started last week, I’m feeling that perhaps stepping back just a bit to review my own process with this process of unloading stuff in general and really sticky stuff in particular. First, because it cannot be reiterated [...]
I remember a story my first shrink-slash-astrologer told me about the sticky and useless nature of stuff. She and her partner, who worked a Big Corporate Job, and had to move around for it, relocated to a spot which shall be unnamed, but that neither of them wanted to spend a hot minute in longer [...]
