The Blitz

Have you ever looked at your calendar and realized you have a whole week open without one single commitment? No appointments, no assignments, no obligations.  When I saw the big blank that was the first week of February, I decided it was time to put the purge into high gear.  No more one drawer here, a closet there.  Sometimes slow and steady wins the race, but in the game of high stakes purging, it just seemed like it was going on forever.  Like all I was doing was cleaning out stuff and accomplishing little else. Time for drastic measures.  Time for...The Blitz.  That the first day of the week was also the first day of the month was too good to pass up. It's a psychological thing -- fresh starts and all that.

On Monday February 1st I put aside all thought of doing anything else and waded in. My previous efforts in the main floor rooms meant I was starting well ahead of the game.  In two days I declared the kitchen, living and dining rooms, bathroom, and bedrooms done. There is nothing left in those rooms that I don't absolutely need, want, or love. For now.  Despite my blitz mentality, minimalism is an ongoing process.

The basement? Not so easy.  Part of that is due to the fact that all of the kid's stuff from her year of living away is now stored in the rec room.  Part is due to the set up of the basement -- mudroom (aka storage room); workshop (aka storage room); storage room (not to be confused with the mudroom and workshop); laundry room (aka storage room); bathroom; workout room; and rec room (aka storage room). Do you detect a pattern here? Has the word storage appeared at least four times too many?

To top it off, the official storage room is where all the boxes of sentimental shit ends up.  The stuff with a past, a history, an emotional attachment -- that you're perfectly happy to leave in a box for the rest of eternity.  So here's the question -- if you don't want to have this stuff displayed in your house, if you have no intention of ever letting it out of the box, why hang on to it? Because when you're dead and gone the person who opens the box will have no attachment whatsoever and will promptly donate or sell it.  That's what I kept telling myself as I opened box after box after box.  And I did pretty damn good. I'm almost positive that I wasn't hurting my dead grandmother's feelings when I relegated her bits and pieces of china to the garage sale pile.  Ditto my collections of salt and pepper shakers and Coke trays, remnants of my younger self.  Oh, there were a couple of things that tugged on my heartstrings, that yes, went back into a box.  But that box is so much smaller and there's only one.  I'd call that progress.

I even hauled out the bins of Christmas decorations of which I am quite sure I own more than the average person.  Because Christmas was always my thing. But now that it's not my thing it was oh, so easy to dispose of more than half of it.  Same with the Halloween and Easter decorations. Yup, I was the mom who decorated for every occasion, trying to create life long memories for the kid. Turns out they'll remember what they remember for reasons you can't direct or control.  Lesson learned.  

Now, with one day left in this weeklong blitz I know I'm not gonna make it. Because there's still the rec room.  And that's where I've dumped every single thing I've designated garage sale worthy.  But I'm on a roll so there's no stopping now.  A couple more days to organize the boxes for a spring garage sale and then that's it.  I'm out from under.  For now.  Because I think living with less is kind of like weight loss.  You loose a few pounds then stay there until your body gets used to being that weight.  I'll need to get used to the new weight of the house.

Before I shed a bit more.


Book Reviews:  Golden State by Stephanie Kegan is the story of a crime and its repercussions as told by a family member of the accused.  Unfortunately I grew tired very quickly of the narrator as the victim.  Overall I didn't see much growth in her character.  I like the premise of flipping the story to reveal how the family of the accused is impacted but it was done much better in Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes and Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin.

Initially I wasn't a fan of Jessica Treadway's writing style in Lacey Eye but I got used to it, or it grew on me.  Either way, I enjoyed this tension filled story of a mother struggling to support her daughter, who many believe was involved in her own father's murder.