Decluttering

[poliphilo]

We have a lot of drinking glasses. When I was packing up the kitchen I found loads of them lodged in the backs of cupboards. I should have counted. I'll bet we own 30 or 40. For the past six weeks we've been managing perfectly well with with 2.

That's modern living for you. We pad ourselves round with wholly unnecessary objects. Ailz is in the front room now sorting through some of them- with a view to getting rid. She's just drawn my attention to a box of confetti left over from our wedding. I believe it's gone in the pile of things we no longer need.

I'm terrible; I'm a horder; things like that box of confetti I hang onto for purely sentimental reasons. There are objects I hate- ornaments mainly- that I keep for fear of hurting their feelings.  And then there are all the things that may come in useful sometime- kitchen things for example. Here I point the finger at Ailz. She loves gadgets and never saw a labour-saving device she didn't think was cool. I could care less. I use the same few pots and pans and wooden spoons over and over and over again- and since I'm the one who does most of the cooking- all those crock pots and rice-cookers and George Foreman grills are so much waste of space.

I'm going to join her now. I need to steel myself. 

Comments

[dalis-clock.livejournal.com]

I used to have a problem with saving everything. It was when I had lost all my belongings on three separate occations that I realized that they are all just "things". My advice is to toss or donate anything you have not used in the last two years. If a memory or feeling associated with an item is great enough, it wont go away if the item is gone. Would you really forget about a trip to Paris if you lost the hotel ashtray you smuggled out of there? No. It isn't a memory. It's an ashtray. Imagine the memories and positive feelings you could create donating crock pots and utensils to a battered women's shelter. Take pictures of the items and make an amusing scrapbook of them, then toss them. "This is the day we took our 3rd broken can opener to East Beach in Rhode Island. We had a blast!"

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Good advice.

BTW, it's good to meet you. I like Dali, but I like his colleague, the film-maker Luis Bunuel even better.

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

For me, it was moving. After a couple, I started to feel like all that stuff was just junk I'd have to schlep somewhere eventually.