Of all the changes in my life over the last year, year and a half, one of the most gratifying has been the purging of the stuff. I didn’t even realize how weighed down I felt by the sheer mass of crap in my home. Between my possession-heavy spouse and the junk we acquired and the accumulated years of kid items and my own piles of detritus, I nearly suffocated. Walls of leering things—some of them quite unidentifiable—closed in on me daily.
Divorce cut the quantity of stuff in the house dramatically. Then both teens substantially cleared their rooms of the vast collection of outgrown everything. I began a campaign of removal, taking long-unused items to the Goodwill or the dump or giving attractive items away to my neighbors via the Buy Nothing movement.
As each successive pile left the premises, I felt better. Lighter. Like, if the FBI was onto me, I could pack up and ghost in short order. The rooms in my house feel bigger. Cleaning is less of a chore. (Ok, totally lying about that. Cleaning still sucks.)
A variety of stuff I’ve not yet parted with: the stacks of containers that used to contain other stuff and are now empty. What if I need them? What if gizmos and tchotchkes and ill-fitting clothes and no-longer amusing toys sneak back in, one at a time, stealthily filling my corners with the unputawayable?
Vigilance is the key, my friends. And since I bought a shopping bag full of books this weekend (in my defense, I was at Powell’s), a similar sized stack of something needs to exit. No compromise.