May is all about Making Space, Making Peace

I've been bitten. By the de-cluttering bug. Big time.

I have written before about how I think we reached maximum capacity in our house last summer; since then it seems like we always have a pile of boxes and misc. stuff sitting in the living room right by the front door--ARGH! Sometimes it is stuff I am in the process of finding a new home for, sometimes it is new stuff we need to find a "home" for in our house. . . I have been de-cluttering since last Fall, getting rid of loads of stuff through Goodwill and Freecycle, but we have also accumulated more stuff in that span of time, what with birthdays and Christmas and the generosity of friends, etc. Which means the pile waxes and wanes, but never completely goes away.

I am SO DONE with THE PILE!

And its not just The Pile--it is stuff laying on the top of the rolltop desk, on my kitchen hutch, on pretty much every available surface. Some of it is there because I have not been good about staying on top of things--like the junk mail I have twice taken off the pile on my dresser (right next to the front door) and stashed in bags in my closet because we had company coming. And which are still there, months later. Some of it is there because it is only in the house temporarily and so does not get a permanent home--like the big Lewis and Clark board game that belongs to our homeschool charter that has been living (mostly unused, I should point out!) on the top of the desk.

All this stuff sitting around makes it hard to clean. It makes me feel overwhelmed, and not at peace. And worst of all, I realized that all this mess has led to true CHAOS--in FlyLady parlance, that's Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. In the wee hours one Sunday morning a couple of weekends back, there was an accident a little ways down our road--someone, who had most likely been drinking, ran into and knocked over a telephone pole, and there were live wires in the road--and so traffic was stopped all morning as the power company put up a new pole. Local drivers knew the long winding backroad, so we got to church and back. But when we got home and walked down to survey the work, a car drove up with a young Korean woman at the wheel. She lives in San Jose and had just been visiting the area overnight and was trying to get back home. Since she did not know the area and was, in her own admission, not a good driver, we advised her to just wait for the road to be cleared, which only took about 30 minutes at that point.

And I was completely chagrined and humilated that my house was such a wreck that I could not invite her in. Yes, it was that bad. Not only was there the usual stuff everywhere and dirt, but we had rushed off in such a hurry that Sunday morning and so there were dirty breakfast things filling the kitchen and clothes strewn everywhere.

Look, our house is old and miniscule and an obvious "fixer-uper." So it shocks people even when it is clean and tidy. No one ever has a neutral reaction to it--they either like it right away or are horrified. So to invite a stranger into this house at its worst--I was not just being prideful, I sincerely did not want to make that woman freaked out and uncomfortable.

So I apologized for not being able to invite her in, ran inside and frantically tried to clean things up, and finally gave up and went out to offer her a cup of tea outside with me. But right as she said she would enjoy the tea, the power company trucks started to leave, and so she could go on her way. She was a lovely person and, Mom, you of all people understand how much I enjoy hosting international people, and so you can appreciate how upset I was at the CHAOS I had let pervade my home to the point where I could not even invite this woman into my home.

In retrospect, I should have just sat outside and chatted the whole time. But I was so embarassed and flustered that I did not think clearly.

That was a turning point in my mind. I don't want that to happen again! So, OUT, OUT, OUT with WHATEVER we do not LOVE, USE, or have a home for! I always say I am happily brutal in my "flinging" but now I am really tossing down the gauntlet.

OUT, DAMNED STUFF!*

As FlyLady would say, you can't organize clutter! It just needs to be released to the world, where hopefully it will go on to find a home where it will be used and loved.

So it was very timely to visit the Happy Atheist Homemaker last week and see a post in which she said she was committing to purging FIFTY things from her home. I felt the rush of adrenaline immediately; I was excited, emboldened. I determined to do the same.

I vowed to de-clutter 50 things last week. So I started to go through drawers and closets and baskets and boxes, and it has been so successful that I am upping the ante.

I will get rid of ONE HUNDRED THINGS this week.

And I will tally them for you. Just so that you might be inspired to do some de-cluttering yourself, and encouraged that you may well have stuff in your house like mine that you had kind of forgotten about, but which it might be time to release. : )

I have two bags full so far this morning!

It feels so good!!!!



When I first told DH about my goal of 50 items out of here, he got this panicked look in his eyes and he snapped the rubberband he had been using. I gently took the rubber band and reassured him that it would be ok: "See, honey, this counts as one!" ; )

*It does not count as swearing if you are playing with the words of Shakespeare, right?