It’s Sunday. The Lord’s Day. The day of rest. The start of a new week. However you want to slice it, this is a day of meaning. Let’s empty our brains and get our fingers burning. Heat up the keyboard and type your little heart out. Just do it in 5 minutes.
I’ve been impressed to see more and more people join in. I love reading your brain dumps. I also noticed some people write a lot more in 5 minutes than I do. So my big challenge this week was to not even look at the screen. I tend to backspace a few times if I’ve made an error (that’s different than proofreading). Halfway through, I glanced up at the screen to see THAT I WAS WRITING IN ALL CAPS. It’s so annoying and I thought, “I have to go back and change that.” But I shant. I shall leave it. Because it’s what my fingers were meant to do.
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I’m not a hoarder. Although I did grow up in a stuffed household. It was to be expected. There was my mom, my dad, 4 kids, at one point, my grandmother, and 5 cats and 3 dogs. Maybe more. I don’t remember.
Anyway, we had a lot of stuff. We weren’t materialistic by any means. I know this because we never had much money. But we always had stuff. Our house was cluttered.
I swore never to be that way even though as a little girl I contributed quite my fair share to the problem. I remember getting upset because my mother was mad I hadn’t cleaned the room. I felt she should simply be happy with the fact that I cleared a path on my floor from the doorway to the bed.
Now I’m all grown up. Life in an 850 sq ft apartment was easy. Every SaTAURDAY, I COULD SPEND AN HOUR AND CLEAN THE ENTIRE PLACE TOP TO BOTTOM. IT WAS SPOTLESS AND MY LIFE, WITH MY IKEA FURNITURE, WAS SIMPLE.
NOW, I LIVE IN 3300 SQ FT. THERE ARE 3 of us. And 2 cats. And a dog. And we have more stuff than I can bear to look at. It’s not valuable stuff. It’s just stuff. It’s hard to part with it because I attach sentimentality to too many things. Or I want to hold on to it “just in case” or I don’t want to throw it away because thatw ould be wasteful.
I’d rather have a cabinet full of wastefull than have a house that was uncluttered. And I’m trying to change,. I’m trying not to be that way.
I once helped out with an estate sale. I saw how a couple form the Depression saved everything. And I saw what a massive burden it was to clean out the remains of decades of saving. Of saving EVERYTHING. It wasn’t hoarding by any means. It was just a lot of stuff. I don’t want to be that couple.
11 comments
I am dealing with the same thing. I hold on to things just because. But this weekend it all changed. I threw out so much stuff! But I am feeling a little bit guilty about it. However, it’s done and over with and it does feel better!
I am the opposite. I like clean and neat and having too much stuff just gets on my nerves. My mother holds onto stuff and when we go visit I just want to have a party to get rid of things. I have learned not everything is sentimental. The things that are will be displayed as such and many times they are not. Now, this is not to say my house is spotless and everything that means something to me is displayed beautifully because it isn’t but I give things a year. If I don’t display, use it or need it, I donate it. It doesn’t matter if it was a gift, etc. We are about to purge our attic. There are things up there from the year we moved in…and it’s there because we don’t have to see it. But it’s time to see it and rid ourselves of it!
Good luck trying to do better, it’s hard!!
We moved into our house back in September but we still have unpacked boxes out. It’s been so hard to find the time to unpack. Sometimes I think I should just toss the boxes because obviously we haven’t needed whatever is in them. Our dining room table is also really cluttered with mail and magazines. We don’t use it that often since we started eating dinner after we put our daughter to bed. One day she just started throwing tantrums when we were having dinner and it never stopped. She’ll want not just our food, which we’ll gladly give her, but our whole plates and what we’re drinking, etc. Now she’s perfectly fine when she has dinner seperately. Sorry, I totally went off track. 🙂
I love throwing things out. Love it!! I used to be the same way: didn’t want to get rid of anything just in case, and because it was wasteful. Somewhere along the line, I changed. Unfortunately, my husband hasn’t I have to pry useless stuff out of his cold, dead hands… well, actually I just wait until he leaves town on business and then chuck out a few garbage bags of stuff… but you get the idea.
I’m always afraid that I’m going to be one of the people featured on those television shows – even though in my little place, there’s no way that I have near that much stuff to even be worthy of that designation. I just need to find a home for everything. Or trash it all. Maybe the latter.
Meanwhile, we’re working on putting our house on the market and I’m having to declutter to make this house looks like it has more storage than it does. I don’t even have that much stuff, so getting rid of what I do have is hard!
I’m a contradiction. I love stuff (but I’m not materialist-give me a bag of stuff from Dollar Tree and I get giddy lol). But I hate clutter. I like clear counters and open surfaces. Inside my closets, cabinets and pantry is an indication that I may have some unresolved OCD tendencies. To help me with my clutter issues I turned to Flylady.
When I was a teenager we lived in a really big house in Colorado and just cleaning the floors was a three hour endeavor. I do not miss those days!
I had a MAJOR meltdown with my kids this morning about the amount of stuff in our house. Mostly papers that they draw on, one little thing, and then won’t throw away.
I LOVE throwing things away. I wish I could pass this on to my children! 🙂
I grew up with a father who was (still is) a hoarder. I will never forget the time I was watching a talk show and they announced they were going to discuss hoarders, and as I watched the people explain why they can’t just clean their house, I recognized every answer as ones that my father had given for my entire life.
That being said, I also attach sentimentality to items in my house. I’m not a hoarder by any means, but I could use a good de-cluttering.
I finally get to you Fadra! I read everyone’s SOC posts and commented on all of them. Some of us are similar. I am also purging and cleaning out things, I used to hang onto everything but with four kids it is impossible. I am also not teaching them about letting go which is a valuable lesson in life. So I have begun to clear out things, sometimes it’s hard and that is the challenge.