I am clutter.  I am stuff.  I collect things.

I feel good when I see a trinket that my mom and dad brought me, back in 1970-whatever from some place they were visiting.  They have travelled all over the world and brought something back for us girls each time.   I look at these things on my bookshelf and feel warm goodness.

I don’t see the dirt collecting around it or the way the books are pushed back against the wall because of it.  I just feel my parents there with me for a moment and feel loved.

I like to have things around me that remind me of the past.  It happens that we moved a bit growing up – dozens of times.  So somehow things connect all those memories together for me.  They are a thread.  Whispers of the past come back for just a moment.

Stuff, there’s that word again. Too many pens and pencils shoved together into a drawer from a past project and end of year desk cleaning at school. Pencil runts with great erasers or fully unused one with no erasers.  Extra large school erasers, so many  that they get included in the plastic army man battle in the bath!

Now, that stuff should be saved and more importantly used.  When the kids come home saying they need another binder or spiral notebook, it is all too easy to stop over at Walgreens and pick one up.  I suppose I could walk upstairs and filter through a bunch of old spirals, tear the perhaps thirty pages of used math problems out, and hand it over.

Yeah, I realize how lazy and stupid I sound. But I would do that.  I have done that.  There are a lot of moments when I think “I might have one of those here — somewhere” but I actually have no idea where it is.  I think it would take less time (and effort) to “Just Buy One.”

Just Buy One.

The antithesis of simplicity and I must repent of (as in change) this way of thinking.

Today the sun is shining and all week I’ve refused to wear a coat.  Sure, it’s still 30 degrees outside but the sun is shining people!  You have no idea how great that is unless you’ve lived a winter in the Midwest.

Spring will be here any day now.  I believe!!!!  I could easily let myself get giddy about the promise of fresh air, the anticipation of opening up the windows and seeing blooms poking up through the snow.  Oh, just the word “bloom” makes me happy after what felt like a really cold winter.

An opportunity to get things in order!

I will be decluttering, cleaning, and organizing.

[Tom is euphoric right now somewhere at work and he doesn’t even know why.  Just the possibility of me working on decluttering makes him happy.]

So, because this is how I stay motivated, I’m checking this book out of the library (Uh huh, I said that.  I will not buy it!)  Organized Simplicity, and joining something called “Project: Simplify.” I’ll be sure to take before and after pictures — No matter how humiliating it feels and keep you posted.

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