I feel like this project today is worthy of two letters. Overall, I want to be better organized, and some of that is computer-ish, with better use of OneNote; one part is paper-ish, for financial records and old school and work stuff I want to whittle down; and then there is just decluttering.
I have had a project I have wanted to do for 20 years, and this is the year I hoped to do it. Purge a ton of clothes. That’s barely an exaggeration. I have clothes that represent basically two sizes smaller than I have been for the last six years. The eternal hope, of course, for all of us fat b******s is that we’ll eventually go back down in size, and while we’re transitioning back through those previous sizes, we’ll want to wear some of the old clothes for comfort, nostalgia, and frugality. Except you are rarely the same shape going down as you are up, and the longer you spend up, the less likely you’ll go back down.
I put some old stuff in bins some time ago, maybe even as far back as when we moved to this house from our previous one, and there might even have been ones from a previous move. Perfectly organized, just not weeded, and I couldn’t pitch without sorting.
We had some major plumbing work done on our house today, which necessitated cleaning out the walk-in closet, or at least a significant part of it. So with a huge whack of clothes already piled on the bed, why not purge before returning? I thought I might wait to do it until I retired, as many of the clothes are work/casual dress pants and dress shirts that I used to wear every day for work. Now that I’m primarily remote and nearing retirement, I’m mostly doing polos for in-person and whatever I feel like it from home (a few too many Ts probably). Anyway, I digress.
The point is that I have extra clothes from three “eras” and it was time to start the purge. I figured I would do an hour tonight, but at the hour, I was basically done Phase I (recent work clothes) really well. And Andrea was willing to stick around and help for phase II (casual pants, undershirts, socks, etc.) and phase III (old bins that were almost 100% dead on arrival).
We ended up spending about two hours in total. Andrea was purging too, although she has done more regular purges and even some recently, so hers wasn’t as aggressive, but me?
We now have ten bags of stuff to get rid of…two are recycling, one is pillows, and the rest are for donation — with some curtains and beach towels in one with some of Andrea’s stuff, and then another seven bags of my clothes.
SEVEN garbage bags of clothes. Including two empty bins that were under beds, and another bin just randomly in my bedroom. I found some pants that still had TAGS on them that I had outgrown before I wore them. I kept a few things for future smaller me, things are heading in the right direction finally, but was relatively ruthless.
I’ve been feeling like I should do this for almost 20 years and probably wanting to do it for at least ten. Why tonight? Why this year? Why this time? I could point to the meds I’m taking, but maybe it’s more the idea of just wanting to declutter some more before I retire. I’m not entirely sure.
I just know I wanted to get it done. And somehow it happened! Andrea even did some weeding of my tie collection — I had 23, she brought it down to 7. Which doesn’t include about 30 that I got rid of about 20 years ago or another 5 or 6 about 15 years ago. I almost never wear ties, not sure I even need 7, but some were too sentimental favourites to let go yet. And yes, of course, I have the red tie still. Silly question.
Now, if I can just do the same de-hoarding of books.
