on a de-hoarding roll!

I have a number of posts running through my brain at the moment so I’m trying to FOCUS on one topic today.  Haha, hopefully I won’t verbal vomit everything all at once to create a million word post!

Yesterday, Meagan came up to help me do some organizing and de-hoarding.  She was on her way to meet up with another one of our friends and offered to leave early and stop here in Kzoo first.  To be honest, I was a bit nervous to accept this help.  It’s embarrassing for others to see how much I save, what kinds of things I save and just the quantity of stuff I have.  There is a part of me that is ashamed.

Nevertheless, I said yes to her help.  I knew having Meagan here would give me the push I needed and I knew exactly where I needed the extra “oomph”.  Storage #2.

We hit up some of the best pizza in Kzoo to fuel our upcoming endeavor.  We got to my storage and it seemed even more overwhelming than I remembered.  But we simply started pulling stuff out and putting it in piles.  One pile was for my other storage, one pile for what I would be taking to my apt, one pile for donation and one pile for garbage.  The garbage pile grew quite rapidly!  Why oh why do I keep empty boxes?!  And then there were the plastic bottles and cans!  In MI you can take them back for $.10 so naturally I’ve been saving them for years.

please add a few more bags to this pile

In total, there were 3 laundry bins full of garbage.  Again, tons of empty boxes – I have nothing on why I keep these.  Next up 2 laundry bins full of donations.  Meagan’s car was packed to the gills that we immediately drove out to Goodwill.  I told Meagan if we didn’t do it right away I would sift through it and pull out items I might “need” later.  Then after Meagan left, I filled another laundry bin that will be taken to Goodwill Wednesday.  (I left it in the basement of my old building so I wouldn’t have access to it!)

there might actually have been almost 4 bins of garbage

Allow me to pause for a moment… last weekend I definitely had some remorse about what I threw/gave away.  I was nervous about this round because while I knew I didn’t need it (I haven’t used this stuff in a year or more) what if I wanted it later?!  As far as the clothes go, a lot of the clothing was from Gonzaga (my undergrad/grad) so it’s sentimental.  Meagan pointed out, “things aren’t the memories – you still have those.”  This also helped when it came time to give away a few things my mom had given me.  I needed to hear this…

We took bottles and cans to the store, made the run to Goodwill and took out the trash.  When Meagan would ask me what I wanted to do with something there were times when I couldn’t make the decision so I let her pick!  I also have a large pile to take to a consignment shop to sell, a table and chairs to sell on Craigslist and 2 TV’s that I am still not sure what to do with.

this wasn’t even half of the donations

So, how am I feeling today?  I thought I would in a sense, mourn the passing of my possessions.  But I am feeling surprisingly okay about it.  I thought I would want to go to Goodwill and buy all of my Gonzaga stuff back or get that roasting pan back (even though it was one of two).  What about those clothes I gave away that were way too big?  I could use those for when I am preggers someday (umm, yes, that is one of the reasons I held onto them for 8 years).  I don’t need them though.  (I will want cute maternity clothes, not clothes I’ve had for 10 years.)  In fact, at one point I told Meagan that the piles of saved stuff made me kind of sad.  Why did I put so much emotion in THINGS?!  I do think it’s a symptom of anxiety – at some point in time I wondered, “what if I NEED it?!”  And yes, I do know this sentence/sentiment is constantly shared on the tv show but I need to own it to fix it.

I can’t dwell on the sad part about it.  Instead I’m focused on my accomplishment!  We plowed through that room and I was decisive.  It’s time to get rid of some of this baggage – literally and figuratively!