This weekend I continued to get stuff out of the storage unit, which felt great, but also came with a little guilt. The guilt is because I burdened my friends with some of my stuff. I did ask them to make sure they wanted it, but it still feels like the opposite of what I'm trying to accomplish and the last thing I want to do to a friend since I feel like I'm benefiting from minimizing and dumping stuff on them! One thing was this kid's activity table that I got from the container store 6 years ago. It was great, the kids both used it a ton and I have so many fun memories of us coloring, having snacks and doing projects at the table. So I didn't want to just give it to "anyone," I wanted to know it was going to a good home. Not sure why there is so much emotion involved over a table but apparently there is for me. So I was able to offload that this weekend and it went to a good home (Leah, you can really say "no" at any time).
I also took another trunkload of stuff to Goodwill. I reduced 6 boxes from the storage unit down to 3 (I'm aiming for a closer to 70% reduction but it's not easy). A big chunk of what I got rid of were vases and cookbooks. For some reason I had kept a ton of vases. Is it the idea of a vase full of flowers that kept me collecting them? Because I love that idea. But what I know is that I only used the same 2 over and over again and so I kept those and parted with all of the rest. The cookbooks were much harder. I love cooking and so ended up sort of "collecting" a lot of cookbooks over the years. "The Joy of Less" book helped me a lot in this area, I just kept telling myself that these might represent what I used to cook (the extension of that is "who I used to be") but they don't contain what I cook (or who I want to be) anymore. I got rid of about half of them. I hope that the vases and results of the cookbooks will grace someone else's table and make them happy.
While I was at Goodwill I was watching them load these large metal crates of clothes into a semi truck. They were probably 6 feet square and just full of clothing. It almost made me ill to think how we, as a society, have created that sort of excess, that they wouldn't be able to sell it all at Goodwill, that it has to be shipped elsewhere to be gotten rid of. I read in O magazine that there are some countries that are refusing our used clothing shipments because we're negatively affecting their textile industries. It is crazy to me that someone would choose a used T-shirt that says something ridiculous about beer on it over a beautiful (maybe even handmade) textile. And don't worry, I'm not saying this is everyone else's problem, I used to look in my closet and wish "gosh, I wish I had a bigger walk in closet." But now I see it differently, no one should really "need" a walk in closet, no one needs that much clothing, including me! While I'm still not to my goal yet, my clothes are finally feeling what it is like to be able to breathe, they aren't all crammed together, and I can't tell you how liberating that feels, to have just the amount you need, to know that I like and wear every piece and it doesn't just hang out waiting to be worn (or fit into). I don't want to be a contributor to burdening others, including other countries with my excessive purchasing and owning of "things" (even if they are useful, like clothing) and so that means that not only do I have to continue to get rid of things, but I have to be strict with myself about the 1:1 rule, when something comes in, something also has to go out. If I can stick to it hopefully I'll breathe easier along with my clothes, and the guilt will fade with time.
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