Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Welcome to My New Distraction

Being at home for months at a time makes you incredibly aware of the things that you own. Friends told me of epic hauls through their closets and cupboards, making plans to get to donation places early before they stopped accepting for the day/week due to others cleaning out.  

I'm not there, at least not yet. There have been donation trips and a couple of large batches of Mailing Things To People (with their enthusiastic consent), but nothing systematic or comprehensive. 

And this isn't either...

This is growing out of my noticing that I've bought yet another book on my Kindle app when I couldn't tell you the last time I opened and actually read something in said app. Or the piles of physical books and yarn I've bought this year as an attempted to cope with disruption, uncertainty, rage, fear, and constant change.  Or vaguely wondering what is in the larger of my two jewelry boxes, which I haven't opened in at least a year, possibly longer. 

There are many things that I own which are not precious -- which were at some point supposed to be transient items in my life but because of how much I bought, or because I forgot I bought it, or because it's not actively On Fire In Front Of Me This Moment, they've languished. Even more frustrating, some of these things were gifts, things which were generously given and I haven't *used* them. Some I've saved for a special occasion which clearly hasn't arrived yet. 

I scrawled out a category list of things the other night I wanted to pay attention to and see if I could make a particular effort to use or use up. I came up with 29 categories in that first pass and I've added more since then.  (Don't worry, the list is digital!)  

I'm writing about this because I love writing-- and it helps me to work through what I think about things or examining why I have a Bath and Body works hand cream from the early 2000s and whether I actually need to keep that still, only as a perfume aide memoir.  

My goals are to look at those categories, see where the overload is. Have a place to think or talk about these things. See what I can use up or donate where appropriate, discard where not. I have no aspirations of minimalism; of no-buying years; etc. I know those don't work for me and I end up over compensating and ending up with more stuff. 

It was the original plan to start this in January; the traditional New Year's resolution and getting started, but the ideas have been fizzing in my head and working on this has been a new focus after an exhausting fall.  

Welcome, thank you for joining me and reading along. We'll see how this goes and if I can keep momentum going for a year. Join me here or Instagram (or Twitter -- though I expect that to be lightly used) and play along. Maybe you have 10 lemon hand lotions too.

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