Three years ago when Karen passed away, I began purging possessions. It began with the need to change the environment, as if to create a new look to my home. I didn't want to look at a chair and picture her sitting in it, so I got rid of the chair. I painted new colors, eventually got new furniture and realized the living room looked completely different.
I moved from there to the antiques and sentimental stuff. Instead of hanging on like most people, those items no longer gave me pleasure to look at. I knew none of the other children wanted them and I had always been "saving" them for Karen. She was gone and it was time for them to go too. Some were carefully packed away and stored, just in case one of the children changed their minds. The rest went to charity.
Then Catie wanted to try to fill a big bottle with coins to save for a trip to Disney World. We began saving and got the idea for a garage sale. It was just the perfect answer for the rest of the clutter. My rule was simple: If it went to the garage sale, it didn't come back in the house. We made a lot of money, cleaned out a lot of junk and it felt good.
As I approach Spring, I am in the mood to do it again. I am finding that I never missed a thing I got rid of and am ready to see what else can go. I recently took all my extra yarn to a sale and made money selling it, although it was a credit to buy more yarn. GROAN!
The junk on the back porch is condensed to a couple boxes that will go into rafters, since it belongs to the kids. The crawl space was "cleaned" once, but it is going to be attacked again. I went through my shoes, organized them and found that I had 3 pair of flip flops....and just bought a pair. I am good for at leas 2 summers now. Now, if only Joe would let me purge the garage!
