Beauty

[sundrops]

just bee, geezerette and Dosey, I'm checking in from ABQ. Success!!! We bought a small place. No problem with our dog. We will close in May. Should be moving by August 1st. Very satisfied with our new home but now still stressed until we find jobs once were here. Flying back home tomorrow morning. Living in the NE part of ABQ.

[sugarftmom]

On 4/10/2015 sundrops said: just bee, geezerette and Dosey, I'm checking in from ABQ. Success!!! We bought a small place. No problem with our dog. We will close in May. Should be moving by August 1st. Very satisfied with our new home but now still stressed until we find jobs once were here. Flying back home tomorrow morning. Living in the NE part of ABQ.

OMGoodness! You have made me so happy! I sort of lived in Albuquerque a long time ago. I actually lived in Angel Fire but was going to UNM and had an apt. there I loved New Mexico and have many fond memories of my ten years there.

I started reading this thread because it seemed like such a good idea. I continued reading because you are such a nice group of posters. The posts showing concern for sundrops and her furbaby were truly touching.

I've been doing the FlyLady system for quite a while and have decluttered more stuff than I even realized I owned. There's still a lot to be done and I feel certain that reading this thread will be a wonderful source of encouragement.

Thank you all.

[sundrops]

sugarftmom, I hope we will be happy there. Our new place is quite small, but it forces us to pare down. And I mean REAL down. It will feel good to only keep necessities and get rid of things that were only used like once a year! When we get home tomorrow the compacting begins!!

[DL2843]

Congratulations Sundrop. I wish you luck on downsizing and moving. I spent another 3 hours managing stuff today. I went through 2 big boxes. One was labeled Diane's Treasures. I kept 3 items. It was ceramic kitties from my childhood. I have not had any of those treasures displayed for over 20 years. Crazy. It is back to work on Monday so that will be an end to my cleaning frenzy.

[sugarftmom]

On 4/10/2015 sundrops said: sugarftmom, I hope we will be happy there. Our new place is quite small, but it forces us to pare down. And I mean REAL down. It will feel good to only keep necessities and get rid of things that were only used like once a year! When we get home tomorrow the compacting begins!!

You'll be happy there I'm sure. There's so much to do around there. There's everything from the balloon fiesta to skiing. Santa Fe's only an hour or so up the road. There's great art there and a marvelous opera house. Having been around the oilfields all my life, I've moved around a bunch. Each place has had its own appeal.

My Mom always said that the only things in a home that really mattered were the ones breathing. That makes more sense to me every year!

Enjoy your next adventure!

[aprilskies]

Congrats, Sundrops. How exciting. I am so glad to hear it worked out with your furbaby. Good luck compacting. I know you will be busy, but if time allows, keep us updated on your compacting journey. These stories are so great to hear. You will feel so much lighter once you shed all the excess.

[DL2843]

I am now thinking about all the treasures I am donating, wondering if I should, because some items were so cute. So frustrating, I forgot they existed, I really do not want more items to dust, if I saw them in a store I would not purchase them, so why is it hard letting them go?

[DL2843]

I too have way too many free address labels.

[just bee]

On 4/10/2015 geezerette said:

On 4/10/2015 DL2843 said: What amazed me the most is how quickly little "extras" add up. My former workplaces celebrated every holiday and birthday. I would need 20 plates so you buy the pack of thirty and store the extra. Twenty years later I have two huge tubs of paper products. Organizations send free notecards to entice me to send in money. Years later I have about an eight inch stack of notecards. I love to read, between freebie bookmarks, gift bookmarks, and bookmarks I bought on trips I had over 60. For me it was a matter of just not thinking about those little things. The same was true of all my lotions and potions, and don't get me started on my "collection" of gift with purchase lipsticks. I guess at some point we just become aware, and then we clean ??

And the address labels! I thought I was the only one who just couldn't bear to toss those little things out. I guess it comes from my raising. I always figured I'd have a use for that stuff someday. But I think I'd have to live to be 231 years old to use up all that "free" stuff I've accumulated!

Oh, no! You, too? I ordered oodles of address labels when I moved here 20 years ago and I still have them because I get "free" labels in the mail just about every week. I could wallpaper the house with all the labels I've collected. Someone else mentioned bookmarks. I'm so happy to hear I'm not the only one who collected those, too. And all these years of school and textbooks, did I ever use even one of those bookmarks in a book? No, I grab glossy postcards that I find in my junk mail to mark my place.

[just bee]

On 4/10/2015 geezerette said:

On 4/10/2015 Dosey said:

On 4/9/2015 geezerette said:

On 4/9/2015 aprilskies said:

On 4/9/2015 DL2843 said: Hello All. Between the living room (storage shed depending how one views it) and my bedroom I have spent a minimum of 20 hours managing/cleaning stuff. I spent another 6 hours in the yard. This experience combined with experiences two of my friends are going through really has me questioning the role of stuff in my life.

I totally totally agree. I am tired of managing it, I am tired of going through it and deciding what to do with it, I am tired of organizing it and I am tired of thinking about it. It will take a while to go through the rest of it but I have put it off for now. But, I at least have gone through 50% of it overall, if not a little bit more. Lately, I have been doing things lightly but know I need to really start attacking it again.

I agree with both of you. As I age and experience more of what I have now taken to calling "real" life, I am finding more and more of the same as you both. Oh, I certainly appreciate my creature comforts and am not about to give them up, but the little extras I've indulged myself with for the past many years have added up to closets, drawers and an attic full of stuff I don't need, use or even remember I have. Not even to mention all the things I've thrown away or donated during those years.

Not only is it all a pain in the neck, I'm getting to the age where I'm realizing that proverbial "You can't take it with you" stage. And the money gone because of it all! Sometimes I think to myself about a particular bunch of items, a group of purses or scarves for instance, of the ones I don't use or have gotten rid of: how much more money would I have today if I hadn't indulged myself and bought them. Besides, my money sitting in the bank account sure is a lot less trouble than all those 'things' I don't use! (Even if it isn't worth what it used to be!)

I had lunch with my BFF the other day, and we were talking about the stuff we have at home that we never or hardly ever use. China came up. Not the country, but the dishes. We do not use our china. Our kids do not want it, and yet, we keep it. We do not like our dining room furniture, either. What a waste of space. We joke that one day we are going to having a dining room furniture burning. It will be a huge bonfire. We will invite people to bring all of their junk that they want to get rid of. Instead of a dining room, I would rather have a music/reading/game/computer/craft/school projects room. Now, that room would be used!

My problem when going through drawers and boxes is that I don't really think about what I am seeing. I toss the obvious junk. What I need to do is really think about if I will ever use the stuff. Organizing a drawer is great, but the contents should only be useful things and maybe VERY sentimental things.

I walk by my china cabinet daily, and almost every time I look at it I think that I'm never going to use any of the china or crystal again in my lifetime. At one time in my life, it was so important to have. Now, I just am thankful I have a cabinet to keep it in so that it doesn't gather dust very quickly.

At one time my parents lived in a large home with all the stuff we as a family had accumulated (and was important to us) over time. When they sold that home and moved permanently out west, they had the entire family pick out which things they wanted to keep, and then they had a garage sale of the rest. They lived in a double-wide mobile home in a park for the last 20 years of their lives. At that point, I thought to myself that I could never live that long in that small of a space, with those few possessions. Now, I have dreams of selling/burning/donating everything we have except for what we can fit in a small trailer and moving to one of those mobile parks. With every passing year, I become my mother more and more. It's funny how many things end up happening to me that I vowed would never happen to me!

Truly horrifying, isn't it? My mother always complained that my father could put everything he owned in a shoebox. Then she met my stepfather whose mother was a collector. Mom moved into a house that held all the things his mother had collected as well as all the things my stepfather collected. My mother was miserable in that house and when my stepfather died, she moved into a house of her choosing. It was wonderful at first, but then she suddenly became a collector herself. She filled that house with things she never looked at after she'd collected them. And she collected things that had never interested her in the past. It was peculiar.

If I could re-do it, I'd travel much lighter. I look at the things I thought were important. Things I worked for and things I'd hoped for. Many of them are items that I thought were so special I was afraid to use them for fear they would be ruined. So I kept them in hiding, like prisoners. Ceramic unicorns that I had to have back in the 70s that my family hunted down for me one Christmas. Still sitting in their original boxes.