Ruthless

I was always the kind of girl that saved everything.

Pretty much anything was fair game in the realm of keepsakes and nostalgia: rocks, pressed leaves, notes, necklaces, socks, holey underwear, pots, plants, dried oranges, pressed orange peels, hats, hair ribbons, clips, drinking cups, markers, magazines, beauty products, shoes.  Heck, you name it.  I've probably saved it.

This is one of my fine qualities (ahem) that drives my tidy husband insane.  And I'm sure it drove my mom insane before him.  I was like a giant, heavy nostalgia magnet unable to let anything go.

But no more.  As I get older, I am slowly making my move to the other side.

I am starting to get ruthless.

Clutter irritates me.  Useless junk piled up in storage spaces drives me batty.  Broken toys feel my wrath.  I am more than ready to chuck whatever unfortunate excess that comes across my path.  I can't take it anymore.  Even items I once clung to with tender remembrances aren't very safe anymore.  I just don't have the capacity of time or energy to preserve it.  Or perhaps it just isn't as important to me anymore.

I announced this to Blaine the other night and got an effective huzzah! amen! it's about time! in response.  I'm finally catching up with him in this dept.  It used to be a fight, but now I'm joining his team.

We have several avenues to remove built-up junk at our house.

• Semi-valuable, useful, and rare items are sold on eBay or consigned
• Ordinary but useful items are given to thrift stores; ditto on excess toys 
• Excess paper products, recycled; likewise on all the other recyclables
• Trash = garbage

Consigning has actually been very useful.  You pay a fee to the consignor to sell the item, but there is absolutely no work involved and that makes it sooooo worth it.  You can also sell larger items or stuff of regional interest that wouldn't necessarily sell (or sell for much) on eBay.  We've succeeded in ridding ourselves from horded household items, dumpster-diving quests, and portions of the lifetime accumulations we've gotten from several sets of older folks moving to a smaller space.

Just this weekend, after organizing a work space to attack my gargantuan mending pile (which was eventually halted by a sewing machine malfunction), I was grim in my resolve to rid ourselves of some of my last holdings.  That $1,000 wool rug that we bought before having children?  The one we've never used because our cat Lester peed on it the first time we ever unrolled it?

Yeah.  That one.  That baby is getting the boot.  I am done.