Monday, May 16, 2011

10 a day

It seems like such a reasonable goal - to get rid of 10 items per day.  I read about the phenomenon on the blog of a martial arts instructor, and found it rather appealing.   Above you can see my first 10 items, which include car wax, expired food and a long dead iPod Touch.  I will give away the brand new bird house, the toy and the ball of bath salts.  The rest will be tossed in the trash after I gaze at the collection for a while, proud of my new mission and its first day of accomplishment.

This follows a TV show on hoarding which I half watched yesterday.  Although I am not a hoarder (I despise shopping) I certainly am the type of housekeeper who easily lets things go.  In fact, I'm not a housekeeper.  I'm a house neglector.

Yes, even now, with my house for sale, with showings being scheduled on a day's notice, I struggle to keep things in order.  Doesn't it make perfect sense that a person with my shortcoming would be better off living the life of a minimalist?  The fewer the possessions, the easier the task of keeping them in order.

Besides, I hope to move in the near future.  Again, logic dictates that I'm better off moving fewer possessions.

The funny thing is, I've been purging for years.  Ask my friend Garnet.  He helped me when I first began - I believe the year was 2005.  We hauled carloads of stuff to the Volunteers of America and the recycling bins.  Carloads.  I recall Garnet commenting on the fact that I had carefully saved miniscule scraps of paper to be recycled.  He mused that perhaps my time could be better spent......

A year ago I purged in a big way, the biggest yet.  I had Salvation Army trucks haul away what looked like roomfuls of stuff.  My sister, who was a hoarder in the true sense of the word, cheered me on from Boston.  She understood the magnitude of what I was undertaking. I loved sending her photos of my newly sparse rooms.

Yet I still have too much! 

We'll see how this new 10-a-day challenge goes.  Please wish me luck.

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2 comments:

Big Dave T said...

A moving sale helps, just as long as it's just your stuff for sale. We had a garage sale last week at the home of my sister-in-law. I thought we could get rid of a lot of stuff but ended up just selling a pair of safety glasses. Meantime, I picked out six CD's my sister-in-law was selling that looked interesting. So the net effect was that we gained more stuff.

moni said...

I certainly wish you luck!