Let It Go

                                                                                 

One of the things that strikes me about most of the clutter I have gotten rid of is that I am almost embarrassed to take pictures of it.  Why on earth am I cluttering the internet with pictures of unlovely clutter?

It is simple.  I want you to see how the clutter adds up.  It is also a reminder to me that I can do more to make housekeeping simpler, such as not keeping magazines piled up in several places in the house.




This time I managed to empty a basket and make the pile on the bottom shelf of my side table
considerably smaller.  It also made me realize I should find a new place to keep photograph albums.
I confess to being a book-magazine-paper piling girl.
I get reading material out and there it sits, because I haven't finished reading excerpts, etc.  Oh, I have many excuses.  Can you relate to putting it off until later?  This weekend I feel a bit more free.  I took care of some things I had been putting off - not just clutter.



Last year in 2013, I had a goal to declutter 365 items and ended up getting rid of 377+ things.  This year started out  a little slow, because of illness.  However, I have been keeping track of the numbers, I can see how what I have done adds up.  This spurs me on, because I can see what seemed almost impossible several years ago is possible.  

This week I decluttered 14 articles of reading material, so my pile is smaller.  All together in 2014 it adds up to 47 items.  Add that to last year, that is over 400 things out of my house.  In 2011 - 2012, I can only guess at how much I was able to get cleaned out of our lives forever, except for the donated items.  What I had not gone through before we moved, I went through afterwards;  moreover, the boxes stayed in the house until I did it.  If they had gone in the basement, they would have sat there.  Having the boxes in the house helped my husband see we had no need to keep many things he had saved for years.  We also had his office boxes, which he did not want in his new office.  Books, papers, and journals are wonderful, but after a while there are many things that are never going to be looked at again.    Be brave if you have things that are just clutter, not archival materials.  Free up your life and space by letting it go.