Saturday, November 27, 2010

27th day of purging Stuff from my life

Quote du jour:
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.
- Henry Miller, Sexus.


Goal of the month: Thank God I'm almost done with the 30 Days of Purging. Honestly, it feels as if I have spent years on purging stuff. It's only been 27 days, but if feels like a lifetime and a half.

Okay. Whine done now. And don't look at me like that. If you'd spent 40+ years hording stuff, you would be feeling the pain as well. The good news is that I am getting rid of about 80% of the paperwork that I've saved. (Good ole Pareto.) And of the rest, maybe half is going to Goodwill or to the "Dunno" box. Perchance the equation will be Less Stuff = Less Merry.
Done! I have now sorted every friggin' box of paperwork that I've been storing for years. The Find du Jour is that I now know who my godparents were. (Found my baptismal record in a file that my mother had given me.) Mind you, they're both dead now, but still it's good to know. My mother never could remember who they were -- one of the many perils of being the youngest in a large family.

HBBC: 1

3 comments:

messymimi said...

Yes, after all those years of accumulating, you have lots of stuff. So do I.

It is difficult to deal with sometimes. I frequent a website whose sole focus is this very thing.

Good for you with the paperwork. We keep entirely too much.

Often we say losing excess stuff is like losing weight. The two can be related, and going after one can help in going after the other.

You can make it the last 3 days. For the "Dunno" stuff, box it up, and put a date on it for 6 months from now. If you haven't needed anything in those boxes for 6 months, toss or donate.

English Rider said...

The quote is a keeper. Good luck with releasing the stuff.

Kathy said...

Congrats and sending you positive thoughts! It is tough to let go of those things....but we are that much lighter afterwards, in mind and in spirit :)

ps. hope you will stop by and follow my blog as well! Have missed this community :)