Lightening the Load

 Good Monday morning! I usually pop out of bed on Monday morning eager to face a new week. This morning I would rather have stayed in bed but it is trash morning, and I wanted to be sure to get my trash to the alley so it would disappear. 

My goal in making sure that the trash goes today is that I have plans to fill up the trash tote with some cleaning this week. After the last couple weeks when we cleaned out Mom and Dad's house and I brought stuff home to reside in my house, I realize I am becoming my mother in yet another way...accumulating  way too much stuff.

If you've been reading my blogs, you know that the clutter is the bane of my existence. On one hand, I would love to be a minimalist owning just enough stuff to get by on. I love the nice clean, uncluttered look of the minimalist household. Not a lot of trinkets and knick-knacks sitting around, maybe just one piece of decor on a table, no doilies to dust around or wash and iron. Not a lot of furniture or other things sitting around on the floor so that vacuuming and sweeping are easy, or in my case so the robot vacuum doesn't keep running into things. On the other hand, I have a lot of things and find pretty things hard to part with. 

My reality is so different from my dreams, clutter and piles everywhere. Every end table has that clutter of items that we like to keep handy, coasters, books, magazines, pens, paper, a box of tissues...and plenty of dust because it's a lot of work to dust these surfaces. It's even worse in the TV room because we both have projects laying around that we work on while we are watching TV. Mike has his wax bullet reloading project handy since it needs to be done each week. I have my ongoing knitting and crocheting projects ready to pick up when I sit down. Rather than the minimalist look that I am desiring, we have the "lived in" look.

I can compare my decluttering efforts to my weight-loss efforts. I keep working at it but not a lot of improvement is showing. However, with no effort expended on either project, the results would be much worse than they are because clutter and pounds tend to accumulate when there is no push-back on them. So there is my iota of encouraging thoughts concerning clutter and weight-loss...it could be worse if I didn't at least try once in a while!

I'm sure many of you have seen episodes of the reality TV show called "Hoarders", or at least heard of it. Each episode shows two people who live in their hoarded mess and the struggles they experience both living in the clutter and trying to overcome their clutter addiction. In many episodes they are literally climbing over mountains of possessions. They have no place to sit, and sometimes they are able to only sleep on an edge of their bed because the rest is piled with stuff. Some people deal more with clutter and others deal with filth in addition to their clutter. They have bathrooms they can't get into or are so overrun with clutter that they can't be cleaned. And the kitchens? I hope they are ordering take out! It takes a toll on their marriages and family relationships with many spouses unable to deal with the clutter or children simply moving out and refusing to come visit their parents. And yet, they continue to accumulate things.

While the show generally gags me, I also find it extremely inspirational. It's always a nudge to get me going to put some distance between me and the situation on TV. A number of years ago when Teri was living here, I spent the weekend nagging everyone about getting the house cleaned up. She finally plopped down in front of the TV and invited me to watch "Hoarders" with her so I could feel better about our house, which she claimed wasn't as bad as I thought it was. So, since I was also tired of nagging everyone, I sat down and watched with her. About halfway through I jumped up and said, "Let's get busy! We are headed that way ourselves!" That plan kind of backfired on her. 

So this is my inspiration for this week. Pick a spot and start clearing things out, putting things away and deciding what to do with extra stuff. So you might see me on Facebook selling stuff this week. Hoping to lighten the load just a bit.

Hope your week is off to a good start with whatever your plan for the week is.