The art of purging life’s stuff
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Ahh, purging, the time has come to sort our life’s possessions. Where to start, what to get rid of? We all know we can’t take it with us. Be it life on the road in an RV or life in a tiny house, there is just no room for all the stuff. So, you think, you’re ready to start paring down and then panic sets in. This is my stuff, stuff collected with care for a lifetime. How do you decide what to keep, what’s important, what may I want one day? I think, I know, I’ll make a list of what’s important.
Reminds me of that scene from the movie The Jerk, All I need is this phone book and this chair and…
The longer I stare at the list of important things I realize maybe it would be easier to make a list of the unimportant.
So here I find myself, sitting in my favorite chair. I start looking around the room and stop on this little toy shark, and think, why? Ok so we’re big hockey fans and the Sharks are our team but I’m not sure how we ever ended up collecting all things shark. So this guy, he doesn’t have anything to do with our team, he doesn’t serve any purpose. This little shark is the first thing to go!
I grab the shark with heart pounding and head to the pantry to grab a bag for things to toss when I see the bath hand towels in there with the kitchen towels. My task derailed, I pick up the towels and head to the linen closet.
Well, opening that closet was opening a whole new can of worms.
I mean, why do I have brand new, in the package, burgundy queen size sheets? First of all, I don’t decorate with that color, and second, and more importantly, I don’t have a queen size bed in my house!!
So the purging of the linen closet begins. Thirty minutes later I’ve only gotten through one shelf and realize I need a better plan. I start brainstorming of a sensible way to sort things when I remember some TV show where they purged houses. They made three piles. Keep, sell and toss. The homeowners would sort their things into the piles then the hosts would come along and make them sort some more. Every time getting the keep pile smaller. Well, piles aren’t practical laying around the house so for me, it’ll be three boxes, their idea with a twist. A box for keep, a box for sell/donate and one for things to give our kids.
