Epiphanies and Purging
I have been moving towards a realization over the past week, and yesterday evening I finally arrived there and had an epiphany. I’ll post more about it later (hint: Law of Attraction), but one of the effects of it is that I’m purging like a madwoman.
I’ve thrown out two garbage bags of clothes that I never really wanted in the first place (things my Mom got for me at yard sales thinking I might like and I felt too guilty to say no to), things that don’t fit anymore, things that are torn up or stained, and things I just don’t like.
I cleaned out our hallway blanket closet and before I started, you had to lean on the door to get it shut because the amount of sheets and blankets were so overstuffed in there. Now there’s an empty shelf, one nearly-empty shelf, the door shuts completely and I’ve got two garbage bags of sheets and blankets in the hall waiting to go to Goodwill.
I actually went through my jewelry.
This one brought up a lot of questions - there are things that I don’t want, don’t intend to wear, I don’t even want to keep for sentimental reasons - but it’s worth something. Like a real gold necklace. What do you do with that? You don’t just want to give it to Goodwill; someone won’t realize it’s real gold and they’ll sell it for 50 cents. What do you do with that?
Then there was the issue of jewelry I *do* want to keep but honestly will never wear. Sure, this stuff can stay in a jewelry box, but it’s not real safe there. If I were to get a safe deposit box, how in the world do you keep necklaces arranged and non-tangled that way? Hrmm. They’re not all “precious” enough to give them big flat boxes like you see in the movies when the bank robber opens up the safe deposit box, opens up the flat velvet box and there’s some multi-million-dollar diamond necklace in there. I just don’t want them tangled, that’s all.
Now it might sound like I’m a jewelry pig, but really I’m not. I hardly wear any jewelry. I have a necklace and two rings that I wear, and that’s it. But when I was a teen and in my early 20’s, I liked to wear neat stuff. Plus I grew up in the 80’s, and that meant lots of costume jewelry. I still had all that stuff kicking around. I ended up tossing out a full gallon-sized freezer bag of jewelry, and filled up another quart-sized freezer bag of jewelry that got relegated to my craft bin.
I also went through two huge moving boxes full of “bathroom stuff” that we never bothered unpacking. Most of this was old expired over the counter medicine, my trash can probably weighs about 30 pounds now. A very few things went onto the shelves in my bathroom linen closet. Ended up with one box being completely empty and the other being about half full of stuff to take to Goodwill. The rest went in the trash.
And it’s only noon.
And I’m still not done.
Hell I’ve not even *started*.
Man, it feels good!
What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
All comments get link love here... I got rid of nofollow!







Sheryl said,
Wrote on February 15, 2007 @ 4:30 pm
Hi there,
Thanks for stopping by my place! Our valentine’s was wonderful…hoping to post pics and tell all about it later tonight.
I agree tackle’s do tend to grow…but, boy, yours sounds like it’s still growing! Great job!
As to the jewelry that you want to get rid of but not donate…how about sharing a pic of the item on your blog and post a note about what you’re willing to trade it for? Another idea is good ol’ E-bay
Marcia said,
Wrote on February 18, 2007 @ 2:19 pm
Hi Carrie
Thanks for stopping by my blog.
About the red book…my link went to this post http://organisingtips.blogspot.com/2007/02/works-for-me-wednesday-date-night.html where I spoke about how we remember good ideas for date night.
I definitely didn’t make the book (I’m not that crazy - I just buy stuff like that LOL) but I did add the tags so that it’s easy to get to the relevant section quickly. Oh, it’s a little bigger than an A5 size. I think any notebook will do. You can even get a real cheapie and put pictures on it and cover it with contact paper.
by the way, your hope chest/ office tackle is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m so, so proud of you. Remember, it’s little steps…it didn’t get like that overnight so it will take some time to get in order again.
please visit again!
Marcia