It has been four months since I posted on this blog. It isn’t that I’ve
lost the desire to get rid of stuff; far from it. Rather, it has been my lack
of will to do anything about it. My bad. My original intention, to let go of something
for 365 consecutive days, failed long ago. Currently my goal is that on the 365th
day of purging our home will only retain things we really need--things of
utilitarian value as well as carefully selected treasures of beauty, such as
pictures, books, photographs and a few favorite sitters. I’m half way there and
hope to be living in this simple bliss by December 31, 2015. You’ll know how
well I’m doing by my posts; if I post, I’m making progress.
Here’s what I wrote today on my www.acottagebythesea.net
blog, which is about silence, solitude and simplicity.
Again I’m dealing with all the stuff (and dust) in this house.
I like to say that I want simplicity in my life to be represented by a very few
things—two sets of dishes, three changes of clothing, the books I really will read-- which may be why I
love being at the cottage. As you might imagine, the owner from whom I rent has
things all over the place, but they aren’t mine to care for, consider, or even
dust. Here at home, however, the responsibility is mine and my husband’s.
It has come to me that I am dealing with a two-pronged concern. The
first, and real one, is all the stuff. The second is all the thinking I do
about the stuff, all the thoughts that consume my mind. Thoughts about too much
stuff, the time it takes to deal with it, how and where to get rid of it, how
to even begin….and on and on. The bottom line is that I just want all the
excess stuff to go away.
As I sit her writing, I realize that what is more important to me than
simplicity of things is simplicity of thought about them. This morning, before
9AM, I organized the mud room. Summer towels to the attic, a mess of extension
cords out to my husband’s work bench for him to deal with, books and white
elephants bagged for the church fair. I did all this purging and organizing
without pre-planning or thinking. It was simple.
My plan, after I post this on my cottagebythesea.net and
lettingofstuff.blogspot.com blogs, is NOT to think about dealing with stuff
until tomorrow morning, when I’ll take on some other area, perhaps just one shelf
or drawer. Can simplicity of thought lead me to simplicity of things?
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