Posts Tagged ‘uncluttering’
Disappearing Days
Can days actually disappear? Vanish without a trace? Somehow or other we have arrived at Monday, November 25th. Where was I when time flew by?
Efforts are under way to prepare our home to host guests for multiple gatherings over the coming Thanksgiving weekend. You know those things that lie around unnecessarily for months, that suddenly become noticeable as being out of place when preparing for special events? Suddenly, piles of stuff are beginning to form at the top of the stairs, waiting to be carried away and stashed in some less conspicuous location.
I don’t understand where it all came from, how it all accumulates, or where we have space to store it in the future.
Maybe those days don’t actually vanish without a trace, and this stuff is what gets left behind by the disappearing days.
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The local deer population has been reduced by a few already. Yesterday morning, we were surprised by a knock on the door, and our neighbor stepped in to describe the scene that had just transpired with his grandson down by the pond on their property. He was confirming we were okay with them tracking a deer they had shot, which then turned and ran into our woods.
In reality, it crossed our property entirely and made it into the neighbor’s woods on the other side of us. The guys dragged it down the trails to the edge of our woods where they could drive up with a trailer to haul it away to be registered with the DNR. I had Delilah out for a walk when they showed up in their truck and of course, she took great interest in this, and thus was a challenge to hold as we visited with the hunters for a moment before they drove away.
I think she is frustrated with the extended time indoors and on the leash this weekend. I spoiled her with a lot of time running loose last week.
Now that I think of it, last night, when our CSA farm neighbor stopped by with this month’s delivery, which included a fresh turkey, Delilah had that same look in her eyes as she put her paws on the counter to sniff the bird as she did with the deer in the trailer. She is a carnivore, there is no doubt about that.
One night I decided to treat her to some left over chicken chow mien on top of her usual food. She eats everything she finds on the ground, from sticks to antlers, mummified carcasses, and even manure, but when I checked her bowl after the chow mien, I found she had deftly set aside a piece of celery and a mushroom that didn’t interest her.
She certainly knows what she doesn’t like.
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Change Happening
I’m contemplating the relativity of fast, and slow. Change feels like it is picking up some momentum around my living quarters lately. At the same time, the process of preparing the house for actually showing to shoppers will take weeks that could turn into months. The process of selling the house could drag on for months. Actually closing on the purchase, when a buyer commits, will likely be another month or two. Who knows how long it might take to find a horse property that wins our hearts and fits our bank account?
Thinking like that helps drive me to get going! If I don’t get some progress in motion right away, those accumulated months will just keep landing farther and farther away.
Regardless, I feel like things are happening fast. I have a meeting at the house this afternoon with a friend whose company can do drywall finishing to finally clean up the holes punched in our ceilings during last fall’s insulating project. We also have some seams that need fixing, and a fair amount of nicks and dings in walls. After all the drywall is fixed, work moves on to the painting. The last step will be carpets, in any rooms where I am unable to convince Cyndie otherwise.
I’ve disassembled our electric piano for Elysa to pick up this weekend. I have removed an old television from the wall-hanger in our bedroom and will be passing that on to someone at work who offered to find it a good home.
Last night I was looking for manuals to put with the piano and television and was amazed to see how many manuals we still have in our files for items that are long gone. I should say, “still had” because they’re in the recycle bin now! It feels especially good to be making progress on de-cluttering.
Took some steps related to a name Cyndie and I are considering using for our new property.
Feels like things are happening fast! Sort of.
Meanwhile, we don’t know if Cyndie will be working in Boston for a short time, or a long time. She is due home for another visit in just a week and a half, so we’ll see if all the changes I accomplish by then have an impact that motivates her in any direction.
Initiating Stoppage
I have taken a step of my own related to Cyndie’s transfer of residence out of our home, to an apartment in Boston. I created an account online with a service called Catalog Choice that will manage the termination of the mountain of junk mail that is delivered to our mail box.
One of the ways Cyndie managed her gift shopping while traveling across the country as a consultant was by way of mail-order catalogs. The companies were more than happy to accommodate her and shared her name and our address, far and wide. One thing I noticed soon after starting the process on the Catalog Choice site, was how inter-related some of the catalogs are that we receive. It is as if they form companies within companies, each one sending a different version of bait to wrest money from someone they know to be willing to shop by mail.
Of course, none of them make it easy to stop the catalogs from coming. Most are willing to work with organizations like Catalog Choice, but some do not, and require that extra steps be taken to contact them with the request by separate email to end the mailings. Fortunately, Catalog Choice does their best to assist the process and provides convenient ways to copy and paste into an email to the less-cooperative companies.
We have allowed the onslaught of catalogs to continue for so long that it will now be a monumental effort to stop all of them. Even after making our request known, most of them report that it will be 60 to 90 days before we can expect mailings to end. I am a patient man, and will be waiting and watching to see it work. I will also continue to update the site each day after bringing in the mail, to assure I have entered every company that is sending catalogs here to Cyndie. She won’t be needing them any more. She can do her gift shopping in the city of Boston now.
Last Days
I must admit, I can be oblivious to a lot of things, but last night when I was helping Cyndie load some things into the pod to be shipped to Boston, I saw stuff I didn’t recognize ever seeing in our house before. Where have I been for the last 20+ years that we’ve lived here? At least I don’t have any reason to worry that I might miss the stuff she is taking.
It is pretty much common knowledge that moving from one house to another is a great way to assess your level of clutterness, and a really effective incentive for uncluttering. We have been in one place long enough to have allowed a lot of unnecessary stuff to accumulate. It wasn’t that long ago that we ordered a dumpster to unload boxes and boxes of paperwork that Cyndie had been storing from her college years. In addition to having become pretty outdated, some of that was beginning to show signs of unhealthy growth.
Today, you can’t even tell where all those boxes came from. There is no big open area in our crawl space where the boxes had been. New accumulation has somehow migrated into that spot such that we could probably do with another dumpster about now.
Since Cyndie is officially starting her new position on Monday, I think it is safe to announce the job she has accepted. It has been a drawn out process, and I was waiting for the possibility of an official announcement from the Boston school district. She has signed a contract for the position of Chief Academic Officer of Boston Public Schools. I reckon she will be one busy worker bee out there, and our separate residences will end up being a non-issue. It’s not like she will be lounging around her apartment all day, every day, feeling lonely. More likely, especially based on her usual mode of operation, she will be working 18-hour days and barely pausing long enough to get a too-short night’s sleep.
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- photo by Cyndie Hays
On an unrelated horse note… we learned yesterday that one of the horses Cyndie has been spending time with, one which told Cyndie he was going to die soon, did just that yesterday. Goliath had told Cyndie that he needed her to tell the owner this news, to give her warning of what was to come. Cyndie wasn’t quite sure about this, but he was insistent that she tell. Cyndie was seated in her wheel chair at the time, and snapped this photo of him as he was giving her a look of urgency that this was the time to break the news.
Mindless Collecting
I saw a short feature on a news magazine program about a man who collects cuff links. The response it triggered from me appeared to surprise Cyndie. I said that I don’t want to be a collector. Now, to me, my comment makes a lot of sense, given my current interest in jettisoning my unused possessions.
I was surprised by her surprise. When she paused to consider the source of her reaction, the only thing she came up with was, rocks. Fair enough. I have been known to pick up a rock or two that appeal to me, hanging on to them for varying durations of time. 
Yesterday morning, I took a look at a couple of the batches of rocks around me and noticed one thing about them that particularly struck me.
I don’t know where they are from.
I don’t seem to attach any specific value to the exact location a particular rock is found. In fact, I don’t even reliably know the general area where whole batches of my rocks are from. I do know that a fair amount have been plucked from the shores of Lake Superior. I don’t know which batch, (I have a tendency to keep them in the groups in which they are first assembled), was found in which areas of the lake, nor during which special outing.
Meanwhile, others locations where I have picked up rocks include, our lake place in Wisconsin and a number of other random places I have traveled, including the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal.
I don’t know what my absent-mindedness indicates about the situation, but it does give me confidence that I will not suffer by sending the rocks back out into the world.
I guess I don’t want to be a collector.
Unclutterization
For everyone who doesn’t already live in an RV, there is a challenge that has been offered to get rid of a thing a day in a goal of uncluttering. I like that it is an open-ended challenge. Do it for a week or a month or a year. Whatever works for you.
I started the process a while ago. I enlisted my staff at work to help me out by being open to receiving things I was interested in giving away. I also invited them to consider doing the same with items they have accumulated. We have an ongoing swap-meet in place now. If an item is serving no purpose for you, then release it back into the world to serve in the manner for which it was intended.
I didn’t expect it to ripple in the way I have seen occur. Uncluttering is magic.
I also didn’t expect it to begin to expand beyond physical items. Now I’m experiencing some uncluttering of my mind. It’s powerful stuff, this challenge.
One thing a day.
It could become a way of life. Or, I could just sell my house and move into an RV. But that’s a different challenge.
Relative Something 