Decluttering...

I work at different clinics and in different environments and have come to find- I like things in their place.  This is probably a revelation to former roommates and my family who have put up with piles. I believe one roommate put it this way- "You're not messy- you're like a river and you just kind of flow...."  The problem is not that I don't know how to organize- the problem is I just typically don't have time to do it.  People who I work with have remarked that I'm one of very few doctors who clean up after themselves.  My mom taught me to clean after myself, I taught my son to clean after himself.  It's not a difficult concept.

The problem is.... time.  I recently read a catholicmom.com blog where the blogger was saying as she was getting ready to take on Lent, she thought of all the wonderful spiritual exercises she could partake in, but actually came to the resolution to just focus on her family and her home.  There are always lofty goals to aspire too, but sometimes, it also starts in our home.  While I do have spiritual resolutions this Lent, I too want to focus on simplifying the home.

My clutter problem started from a childhood where my family was blessed with a nice size house and so it was easy to accumulate things.  My mom and sister were teachers- I learned from them that things can always be re-purposed, or fixed, or things that you're not using now you may want later.  When you have the space to store it, it's not so much a problem.  I lived for the most part 27 years either with my family or a half hour away.  Then, shortly before I was supposed to move long-distance for my internship, I broke my leg.  I was blessed to have friends to help me pack, but this also led to me having stuff packed that I didn't really want to bring with me, and not having the ability to sort things out.  During my internship it was about a 70 hour plus work-week.  Obviously I wasn't in my home for much longer than to just get a sleep and do the dishes.  Then I moved another couple of thousand miles to the other coast and then ~8 months later I moved again.  Then, I unexpectedly got a job on the other side of the coast and moved 2 weeks after doing a mission trip in Mongolia.  Yeah- that wasn't stressful at all.  Then I was training for a marathon, got married and moved in with my husband and we both found we brought a ton of boxes with us, which we planned on going through, but I had a difficult pregnancy with a bout 7 months of sciatica and then we had a baby....

I had traipsed boxes of stuff from one end of the country to another multiple times and then went through it saying to myself, "Why do I still have this?"  My husband is a sentimental man, so he had boxes of things such as church bulletins from all the various churches he had been to and other items that had to be gone through too.  We each have been continually doing our own purging and I credit my kitty with helping me let go of one box of sentimental things for me- programs from my friends weddings and other items like that.  Yep- Duchess pretty much destroyed that box and I actually wasn't mad at her.  I had a sense of relief that I didn't have to make the decision to let it go, she did it for me.

When we go through stuff, it helps us to restore sanity and just feel better, it also helps save money because you can actually find things.  I don't like being nagged about decluttering, and I don't think it is something to do at a stressful time of life (would have been hard to do it up to this point).  I think the best time to declutter is when you are fairly happy and don't have a time crunch to do it with.  I've actually set up for an organization to come to our house and pick up a box of items once a month to be re-sold and benefit the organization.  My husband thought it would be difficult to come up with a whole box every month, but it's not really that hard.  Whether it's clothing, or old toys, if there's not a large sentimental attachment to it and it wasn't a gift from the grandparents, it's time to bless someone else with it.  I also look forward to the next time we move, not discovering that I've been moving the same boxes from coast to coast over 20 years.

So this Lent, I've added to my spiritual exercises turning the one storage area we do have in the house  into a play area.  We have a house with a wonderful open floor plan, but very few and very small closets; we don't even have a front hall closet, basement or attic.  We are blessing someone else with the couch my husband used to have (it's still in good shape), putting up some storage shelves and are going to try to devote that area to the toys and items that have been overtaking our house (and maybe give us a little pantry space too).  Maybe I'll even post before and after pictures (if my hubby lets me).  This is all part of my them this year of "Letting Go".  Oh- and I've been blessed that I still get to use my mom's basement (that's where all my son's old baby stuff and other items we don't regularly use gets shipped off too).