Clutter

I am surrounded by piles of nothing.

My office, my place of mental function and bread winning, is trashed.

Of course, instead of taking 20 minutes to find a home for our camping gear and purge piles of mail...I blog.

Yep. I know.

It doesn't help that the last communal (non-bedroom) closet in the house was just emptied last weekend to install our brand new (old, but refurbished) water softener.  No more sludgy, stainy water!!  It is crystal clear!!

But alas, the goods all spilled into my office, and I'm surrounded by the stuff we've moved 8 times from apartment to house to house to apartment... and never dealt with.  This "stuff" pile has gotten smaller over the years as we lost the massive storage space to convert that room into a nursery.

I will never throw away this postcard - ever!

It probably is a good thing to be forced into looking at the bottom of that pile.

Some things need to be reconsidered now that we've moved into our current stage of life: boxes of empty jewel cases - the cds have long since been lost or destroyed in use. Dog E collar, old sleeping bags, files and files of papers that it would take 20 times longer to locate than just to Google the info.

Other things have withstood many a previous purge:  Notes and postcards from high school and college. Letters from an elderly childhood neighbor.  Framed posters we used to decorate our first house together. Pictures that adorned our first shared walls. Those stay.  We may not hang them, but they stay.

I'm putting my sentimental foot down. Some things are ok to keep. Hoarding isn't always bad. Sometimes it's just a matter of keeping things that mean something to you.

That's an argument better made in a room much less cluttered.