Beauty

[aprilskies]

@geezerette, simplicity is what I am shooting for as well. I am slowly getting there. But, like you, I still need to get what I bring in under control.  Still making bad decisions. But at least I am finally seeing the beauty of having less. 

@Shanus, I too have been decluttering for I guess over 10 years now. I started to get serious about it when I moved relatives that were in their house for over 30 years. I never ever want to go through that again. So, I started with my own stuff. I did one major declutter on all categories I guess 5 or 6 years back and just have been going in bits and bursts ever since. But, I really want to start hitting it hard but making the right decisions of what goes. I was a bit hasty in the past. I am so glad to hear you are going to not leave the burden to your kids. I see so many people on this board saying it is someone else’s problem and I just cringe. I been through it and it is not fun nor right to leave a mess for others to deal with.  Good luck as your move forward. 

@just bee, Simple September sounds good to me. I have gotten a handle on a few things but then lost it on others so.....I am ready to give Spartan a go. 

As far as all of your pins and such, I cant imagine your collection. You have vintage and mid-century vintage on your hands. Have you ever considered selling some on eBay if you are over it? 

@Brisky, this is a great thread we have here. All of these ladies stay with me throughout my day at times. Where else can we talk about all of this craziness and not feel so crazy. People in my real life look at me like I have two heads, good thing they dont know the extent of it. 😂 

@rnmom, how are you doing?  How is decluttering? 

Has anyone seen Bohemian Rhasphody?  I thought the movie was good and it got me back into listening to some Queen music. Boy, does that really take me back. 

Have a nice weekend, Everyone. 

[geezerette]

@Brisky wrote:
You know I think about this thread more than I realized. Kind of Wierd when I walk into my garage and think of just bee.
I even looked up the book, "Carl the good dog" I now feel I need to read it.
Life is strange... Sometimes in a cool way.

---

@Brisky 

Carl has a new book coming out soon I think, “Goodnight Carl”, or something like that. 😉

I agree.  Life is strange sometimes...in a cool way.  I think we tend to forget those moments and dwell more on how life is a downer. 🙂

[just bee]

---

@Brisky wrote:
You know I think about this thread more than I realized. Kind of Wierd when I walk into my garage and think of just bee.
I even looked up the book, "Carl the good dog" I now feel I need to read it.
Life is strange... Sometimes in a cool way.

---

@Brisky 

Here's another thing you can think about when you walk into your garage: I got home from work this morning and our garage door was wide open.  BH took the garbage out last night and forgot to close the door.

And I was so close to storing my jewelry out there.  You think I would have learned after I lost all the photos in the antique chest.  Duh!

Now don't sit down with the Carl series and expect War and Peace.  There's not a lot of actual reading involved here.  But Good Dog, Carl is so beautifully illustrated that I just had to give it to the restoration crew.

Life is definitely strange.  And sometimes very cool.

[just bee]

---

@aprilskies wrote:

@geezerette, simplicity is what I am shooting for as well. I am slowly getting there. But, like you, I still need to get what I bring in under control.  Still making bad decisions. But at least I am finally seeing the beauty of having less. 

@Shanus, I too have been decluttering for I guess over 10 years now. I started to get serious about it when I moved relatives that were in their house for over 30 years. I never ever want to go through that again. So, I started with my own stuff. I did one major declutter on all categories I guess 5 or 6 years back and just have been going in bits and bursts ever since. But, I really want to start hitting it hard but making the right decisions of what goes. I was a bit hasty in the past. I am so glad to hear you are going to not leave the burden to your kids. I see so many people on this board saying it is someone else’s problem and I just cringe. I been through it and it is not fun nor right to leave a mess for others to deal with.  Good luck as your move forward. 

@just bee, Simple September sounds good to me. I have gotten a handle on a few things but then lost it on others so.....I am ready to give Spartan a go. 

As far as all of your pins and such, I cant imagine your collection. You have vintage and mid-century vintage on your hands. Have you ever considered selling some on eBay if you are over it? 

@Brisky, this is a great thread we have here. All of these ladies stay with me throughout my day at times. Where else can we talk about all of this craziness and not feel so crazy. People in my real life look at me like I have two heads, good thing they dont know the extent of it. 😂 

@rnmom, how are you doing?  How is decluttering? 

Has anyone seen Bohemian Rhasphody?  I thought the movie was good and it got me back into listening to some Queen music. Boy, does that really take me back. 

Have a nice weekend, Everyone. 

---

@aprilskies 

I just met someone -- almost 80 years old -- who is losing her home.  She has a reverse mortgage and that requires you to maintain your property.  Turns out she is a hoarder and is now facing foreclosure.

We had a nice little chat about collecting things for 50 years and then losing them all.  And how good that can actually feel.  (Remember: Life is strange.)

I'm paying through the nose for cable and I did catch Bohemian Rhapsody.  I was wondering if people are buying Queen again -- they're sure getting a lot of airplay on the radio ga ga -- radio goo goo.

It was watchable.  But I did like the Live Aid concert footage.  Have you watched any of it on YouTube?  Just watched Radio Ga Ga and it's worth revisiting.

Roger Daltrey said Freddie Mercury had the best voice in rock 'n' roll.  High praise.

[just bee]

---

@geezerette wrote:

@Brisky wrote:
You know I think about this thread more than I realized. Kind of Wierd when I walk into my garage and think of just bee.
I even looked up the book, "Carl the good dog" I now feel I need to read it.
Life is strange... Sometimes in a cool way.

---

@Brisky 

Carl has a new book coming out soon I think, “Goodnight Carl”, or something like that. 😉

I agree.  Life is strange sometimes...in a cool way.  I think we tend to forget those moments and dwell more on how life is a downer. 🙂

---

@geezerette 

I think I tend to agree.

[aprilskies]

---

@just bee wrote:

---

@aprilskies wrote:

@geezerette, simplicity is what I am shooting for as well. I am slowly getting there. But, like you, I still need to get what I bring in under control.  Still making bad decisions. But at least I am finally seeing the beauty of having less. 

@Shanus, I too have been decluttering for I guess over 10 years now. I started to get serious about it when I moved relatives that were in their house for over 30 years. I never ever want to go through that again. So, I started with my own stuff. I did one major declutter on all categories I guess 5 or 6 years back and just have been going in bits and bursts ever since. But, I really want to start hitting it hard but making the right decisions of what goes. I was a bit hasty in the past. I am so glad to hear you are going to not leave the burden to your kids. I see so many people on this board saying it is someone else’s problem and I just cringe. I been through it and it is not fun nor right to leave a mess for others to deal with.  Good luck as your move forward. 

@just bee, Simple September sounds good to me. I have gotten a handle on a few things but then lost it on others so.....I am ready to give Spartan a go. 

As far as all of your pins and such, I cant imagine your collection. You have vintage and mid-century vintage on your hands. Have you ever considered selling some on eBay if you are over it? 

@Brisky, this is a great thread we have here. All of these ladies stay with me throughout my day at times. Where else can we talk about all of this craziness and not feel so crazy. People in my real life look at me like I have two heads, good thing they dont know the extent of it. 😂 

@rnmom, how are you doing?  How is decluttering? 

Has anyone seen Bohemian Rhasphody?  I thought the movie was good and it got me back into listening to some Queen music. Boy, does that really take me back. 

Have a nice weekend, Everyone. 

---

@aprilskies 

I just met someone -- almost 80 years old -- who is losing her home.  She has a reverse mortgage and that requires you to maintain your property.  Turns out she is a hoarder and is now facing foreclosure.

We had a nice little chat about collecting things for 50 years and then losing them all.  And how good that can actually feel.  (Remember: Life is strange.)

I'm paying through the nose for cable and I did catch Bohemian Rhapsody.  I was wondering if people are buying Queen again -- they're sure getting a lot of airplay on the radio ga ga -- radio goo goo.

It was watchable.  But I did like the Live Aid concert footage.  Have you watched any of it on YouTube?  Just watched Radio Ga Ga and it's worth revisiting.

Roger Daltrey said Freddie Mercury had the best voice in rock 'n' roll.  High praise.

---

@just bee, first and foremost, I would never want to experience a fire, who does, right, but I think it is a brand new beginning without all of the mental gymnastics that go along with decluttering. You have to feel a little lighter. I will be honest and say, one thing keeping me from doing another major declutter is just the quality of things out there.  However, then the other side is, if I am not using something, what is the difference, it is not like I am going to replace it.  But, it is the mental challenge I cant seem to navitigate through right now.

I have a kitchenaid big daddy stand mixer I bought maybe 12-14 years ago, ask me how many times I used it.  I dont have a big kitchen so it was daunting just thinking of pulling that heavy thing out of the closet each time and not have the counter space to accomodate it.  Two years ago, I pulled it out and put it on my microwave stand, it is now collecting dust out in the open.  Does it still work, are all of the bearings dried up, probably, so I am going to test it in the next month or so. Right now I dont want to make something I may need to consume. That is just one of many items collecting dust.

Yes, I have watched the portion of live aid with Queen. I wanted to see the how well they matched it. I enjoyed it. I think after the movie, their music sales went up. Understandably. It was one of the things I loved best about the movie.  It was a flashback for me. I have always enjoyed them. Yes, that is a high compliment. I also heard that after their performance at live aid, Elton John told them they stole the show.  I thought the movie was a nice break from the norm.

[geezerette]

---

@just bee wrote:

---

@Brisky wrote:
You know I think about this thread more than I realized. Kind of Wierd when I walk into my garage and think of just bee.
I even looked up the book, "Carl the good dog" I now feel I need to read it.
Life is strange... Sometimes in a cool way.

---

@Brisky 

Here's another thing you can think about when you walk into your garage: I got home from work this morning and our garage door was wide open.  BH took the garbage out last night and forgot to close the door.

And I was so close to storing my jewelry out there.  You think I would have learned after I lost all the photos in the antique chest.  Duh!

Now don't sit down with the Carl series and expect War and Peace.  There's not a lot of actual reading involved here.  But Good Dog, Carl is so beautifully illustrated that I just had to give it to the restoration crew.

Life is definitely strange.  And sometimes very cool.

---

@just bee 

I had always wondered why some of the “Carls” looked different.  When @Brisky posted the above I went on a hunt for Carl books.  Turns out the illustrations were based on the author’s dogs, which I already knew.  But I didn’t realize that she had several dogs over the period that she wrote the books.  Some were more attractive than others. 🤭

[rnmom]

@aprilskies - I am doing good, thanks so much for asking. Work is still really busy, we're still short and I've been working extra hours. We finally got a position filled and the new person is training right now so I'm hoping things will start to improve soon. 

Kids and hubby are still home for the summer so I haven't really gotten much decluttering done. I still haven't even done any back to school shopping so we have to get out in the next week or two and at least get new shoes and their school supplies. 

I was happy this summer to get 2 larger items out of  the house, a chest of drawers and a large computer armoire both got taken out to the curb and both got picked up before trash day, so that made me happy. Other than that the decluttering has been minimal, mostly just the day to day items. If I stumble on something that no one no longer wants I'll toss it or add it to the donate box but I'm not really going out of my way to declutter anything.

I've already decluttered so much, plus everyone is under my feet and I've been working extra hours. Put it all together and life feels like an upheaval. While I like summer, I'm actually really looking forward for everyone to go back to work/school to feel back to "normal" a bit. After 2 months of this I'm so over it. 

[just bee]

---

@aprilskies wrote:

---

@just bee, first and foremost, I would never want to experience a fire, who does, right, but I think it is a brand new beginning without all of the mental gymnastics that go along with decluttering. You have to feel a little lighter. I will be honest and say, one thing keeping me from doing another major declutter is just the quality of things out there.  However, then the other side is, if I am not using something, what is the difference, it is not like I am going to replace it.  But, it is the mental challenge I cant seem to navitigate through right now.

I have a kitchenaid big daddy stand mixer I bought maybe 12-14 years ago, ask me how many times I used it.  I dont have a big kitchen so it was daunting just thinking of pulling that heavy thing out of the closet each time and not have the counter space to accomodate it.  Two years ago, I pulled it out and put it on my microwave stand, it is now collecting dust out in the open.  Does it still work, are all of the bearings dried up, probably, so I am going to test it in the next month or so. Right now I dont want to make something I may need to consume. That is just one of many items collecting dust.

Yes, I have watched the portion of live aid with Queen. I wanted to see the how well they matched it. I enjoyed it. I think after the movie, their music sales went up. Understandably. It was one of the things I loved best about the movie.  It was a flashback for me. I have always enjoyed them. Yes, that is a high compliment. I also heard that after their performance at live aid, Elton John told them they stole the show.  I thought the movie was a nice break from the norm.

---

@aprilskies 

The Universe is sending me another message.  I had conversations with two hoarders this week.  And I found myself giving them advice.  This is an interesting position to be in because I can now be honest about my hoarder tendencies.  I used to say I wasn't a hoarder because I didn't collect things like old cereal boxes and used adult briefs.  No, the things I collected really did have value.  No such thing as "too many" books, right?

But during the month that I had to go into that sooty, smelly house and sort through boxes and boxes of items I hadn't even looked at in years and, in some cases, didn't even know I had, I found items that even I couldn't justify keeping.  So much of it was paper.  I was lucky that none of the kindling in the house ignited.  Our house might have taken out the neighborhood.

Then, last night, I had a conversation with our friend in Missouri who lost his house in a tornado.  His brother just lost his house in a flood.  He was wondering about his sister who still lives in Albuquerque.  Are locusts in her future?

But we talked about the things we lost and what kinds of things we had collected.  He was about to go out and buy additional filing for his paperwork, then realized that he could just open his existing filing cabinets and see what was inside.

He purged.  He's been shredding for days, using two shredders.  Now he doesn't need to buy any more filing systems.

I was very close to ordering some tea tins from Harney & Sons last night.  Big sale on some of the varieties I regularly drink.  My goal was to have the tins and just keep them filled with their corresponding teas.

I'd started that before the fire, then ended up leaving all my tins behind.  So, I asked myself, where would I put these tins once they arrived?  Why, I can arrange them on my wine rack.  I had tins from the '70s on that rack before the fire.  I even had a tin from Harrods in London -- it was a gift from a very nice Englishman.  I meant to keep that one but I don't think I did.

But after I talked to our friend about how much better he feels with less "stuff" -- and he really didn't have that much to begin with -- I started to rethink the tins.

I woke up this morning and there was a Time Life infomercial on -- another of those massive music collections.  It actually seemed like a good idea to order that.  Then I remembered all the CDs, cassettes and record albums I just paid to have restored.

All that music must have benefited me in some way.  BH and I were watching the end of Jeopardy last night and no one was able to answer the final question.  Once it appeared I blurted out "Mozart!"  And so it was.  BH just stared at me and asked how in the ____ did I know that.

I'm just happy that part of my brain is still functioning.  But it's that part that's filled with trivia and useless information.

But the brain is plastic and can be trained.  I also noticed when I woke up this morning the boxes that were in the dining room were gone.  I came of age in the '70s and media and public education filled my head with nonsense about women being better than men.  I know this is poppyc_ck because men have something that most women don't have.  That spatial thing.  I said we'd never fit in this little house.  BH said that not only would we fit, but we would have all our restored stuff AND all the items in the storage unit fit, too.

Everything we own now is in this house.  Except for the other house.  But I bet he could make that fit, too.

All I know is that the rooms I'm looking at right now: The kitchen, living room and dining room are almost clutter-free.  And I feel at peace.

We have only two rooms that aren't Spartan and everything in them is neatly stacked and arranged so it can easily be moved into the old house once we find someone who is willing to rebuild it.

I said no to philosophy, Harney & Sons and Time Life this week.  Now I need to say no to the Beekman boys.  That TSV is actually tempting!

Clearly the brain requires more training.

[just bee]

---

@rnmom wrote:

@aprilskies - I am doing good, thanks so much for asking. Work is still really busy, we're still short and I've been working extra hours. We finally got a position filled and the new person is training right now so I'm hoping things will start to improve soon. 

Kids and hubby are still home for the summer so I haven't really gotten much decluttering done. I still haven't even done any back to school shopping so we have to get out in the next week or two and at least get new shoes and their school supplies. 

I was happy this summer to get 2 larger items out of  the house, a chest of drawers and a large computer armoire both got taken out to the curb and both got picked up before trash day, so that made me happy. Other than that the decluttering has been minimal, mostly just the day to day items. If I stumble on something that no one no longer wants I'll toss it or add it to the donate box but I'm not really going out of my way to declutter anything.

I've already decluttered so much, plus everyone is under my feet and I've been working extra hours. Put it all together and life feels like an upheaval. While I like summer, I'm actually really looking forward for everyone to go back to work/school to feel back to "normal" a bit. After 2 months of this I'm so over it. 

---

@rnmom 

And this is why autumn remains my favorite season.  I slept with my phone yesterday because I was so convinced I was going to get a call from work.  Understaffed doesn't even begin to explain it.

Normal is coming... don't fret.