Saturday, January 2, 2010

Start As I Mean To Go On

One of my goals for 2010 is to get rid of as much of the excess "stuff" in my apartment as I possibly can, preferably the sooner the better. I am hoping to spend most of the upcoming winter months working on this goal, as once the summer comes, I tend to spend most or every weekend at the cottage which means no time for tasks such as this one.

In the interest of starting as I mean to go on, I spent a couple of hours today throwing out and/or shredding an entire box full of paper that dated back at least 10 years and in some cases 15. It was scary, really, to consider how long I had been holding on to this paper - old papers from previous jobs that in truth, I haven't even looked at in all this time. I had kept the papers as reference material but I've honestly never needed to look at them. So today, into the shredder or garbage pail they went. I now have 3 grocery bags full of paper to take downstairs to the recycle bins. [I'd take them down tonight except that would mean changing out of my pyjamas. :) ]

I also put away the few Christmas decorations I had put out this year and the boxes of bows and wrap (it must be Murphy's law that as soon as you tape up the last box and put it away, you immediately notice one last item sitting out in full view that you had overlooked, which means taking down the box again, ripping it open and adding that one final thing), tidied up a closet and finally cleared several boxes out of the hallway of my second bedroom that have been sitting there since I moved in last year. Some of the boxes I emptied, some were put away in the closet for now, to be emptied at a later date.

Just for fun, I took this photo of the pattern left on the carpet by the boxes that had been stacked there all this time:


I can already feel the difference that moving those boxes and discarding that paper has made. I am really looking forward to working on this cleansing project. The added bonus is finding bits of paper to use in the "shabby journal" I'm making - more about that in tomorrow's post.

1 comment:

Sharon said...

Hi way to go. Feng Shui says getting rid of clutter is the best way to have exciting things happen in your life. Get ready! I read somewhere that the number 9 is important when dealing with stuff. Give away or throw away 9 things and change will happen. Woo hoo! Sharon