What a playful way to explore your relationship to stuff. I also find myself in the purge phase. If only I could get the rest of my family here too.
I also really related to the Doom Box post. I feel my house is filled with them. In fact, my husband’s solution to things without home is bins. So now we have lots of bins, when I think we really should have less things!
I really relate to this. For some reason, I’ve always been drawn to objects and trinkets that tell a story. Antiques shops, car boot sales, charity shops all hold great appeal to me. And we have a fair few of them hanging around the house. It’s funny, but I’ve never equated my love of browsing and purchasing these things with “shopping” or as a way of filling some sort of hole, but of course, that’s exactly what it is! Really interesting to think about! Then again, it definitely can give me the thrill of a new purchase with minimal spend, so at least I’m not out of pocket. Just full of clutter 😅
Oh I do agree with your post. I love purging. Lashing the stuff into bags for the charity shop... cleansing the home of unnecessary junk. Although I have been known to arrive in said charity shop and upon deciding to have a quick little root about the place, felt obligated to buy that glorious green plate, just because it reminded me of one my mother used to have and on it goes....
So very resonant. Thank you for these reflections, which I read as I near the end of a month when I’ve made a practice of getting rid of stuff every day. It’s been tiring (why did I keep these things?), it’s been liberating (yay to be free of these things!), and now—you’ve articulated things about the process that I hadn’t put into words, but recognize as truth. Whew!
The closet of your grandmother's antique shop sounds like heaven. And as much as I, too, am in the purge stage of life, I find myself wishing I could hunker down there and be invited to pick something out to bring home.
I am so feeling a purge coming on Lisa! We're are looking to move house and I cannot wait to clear out. Energetically it's so great for creating space and I still have things that I brought from an old life that I'm ready to let go of. Start of a new chapter me thinks.
So true! What strange creatures we are, us humans, collecting and gathering a mountain of objects we don't need and can't take with us when we go, in order to try to appease our existential anxieties. The animal world would never be so dumb as to imagine that's what life is about 😂
I love the idea of calling all my boxes "doom boxes." I've been purging for years, ever since I joined a buy nothing group. The hardest has been getting rid of the fantastic "finds" from years of thrift shopping and estate sales. The easiest, though, and the first things to go were, oddly, gifts that were given to me. Thoughtful gifts, but things I never needed and wanted nonetheless. Through buy nothing I've been able to give them to others with great joy -- most of those pricey gifts going towards wedding or baby showers. It's been great! And now I'm tackling papers. So. Much. Paper. Do I need receipts from tires bought in 1995? Obviously not. What about 20 years of insurance paperwork? No. But its daunting. And I never seem to have the energy to finish (she says, while looking at the office floor with seven "piles" of paper to be refiled or recycled....)
What a great way to express the cycle of life as it is represented by stuff. I remember the "merger" phase when I moved in with the man who is now my husband. His condo was tiny and filled to the brim with chairs. His chairs, my chairs filled a dining room that had no table. Two gigantic pink La-Zee Boys, left behind by his ex, occupied the living room leaving very little room for the two "slipper" chairs my grandmother bequeathed to me. We could not stand or lie down but we had plenty of places to sit.
What a playful way to explore your relationship to stuff. I also find myself in the purge phase. If only I could get the rest of my family here too.
I also really related to the Doom Box post. I feel my house is filled with them. In fact, my husband’s solution to things without home is bins. So now we have lots of bins, when I think we really should have less things!
I really relate to this. For some reason, I’ve always been drawn to objects and trinkets that tell a story. Antiques shops, car boot sales, charity shops all hold great appeal to me. And we have a fair few of them hanging around the house. It’s funny, but I’ve never equated my love of browsing and purchasing these things with “shopping” or as a way of filling some sort of hole, but of course, that’s exactly what it is! Really interesting to think about! Then again, it definitely can give me the thrill of a new purchase with minimal spend, so at least I’m not out of pocket. Just full of clutter 😅
Oh I do agree with your post. I love purging. Lashing the stuff into bags for the charity shop... cleansing the home of unnecessary junk. Although I have been known to arrive in said charity shop and upon deciding to have a quick little root about the place, felt obligated to buy that glorious green plate, just because it reminded me of one my mother used to have and on it goes....
So very resonant. Thank you for these reflections, which I read as I near the end of a month when I’ve made a practice of getting rid of stuff every day. It’s been tiring (why did I keep these things?), it’s been liberating (yay to be free of these things!), and now—you’ve articulated things about the process that I hadn’t put into words, but recognize as truth. Whew!
The closet of your grandmother's antique shop sounds like heaven. And as much as I, too, am in the purge stage of life, I find myself wishing I could hunker down there and be invited to pick something out to bring home.
I am so feeling a purge coming on Lisa! We're are looking to move house and I cannot wait to clear out. Energetically it's so great for creating space and I still have things that I brought from an old life that I'm ready to let go of. Start of a new chapter me thinks.
So true! What strange creatures we are, us humans, collecting and gathering a mountain of objects we don't need and can't take with us when we go, in order to try to appease our existential anxieties. The animal world would never be so dumb as to imagine that's what life is about 😂
I love the idea of calling all my boxes "doom boxes." I've been purging for years, ever since I joined a buy nothing group. The hardest has been getting rid of the fantastic "finds" from years of thrift shopping and estate sales. The easiest, though, and the first things to go were, oddly, gifts that were given to me. Thoughtful gifts, but things I never needed and wanted nonetheless. Through buy nothing I've been able to give them to others with great joy -- most of those pricey gifts going towards wedding or baby showers. It's been great! And now I'm tackling papers. So. Much. Paper. Do I need receipts from tires bought in 1995? Obviously not. What about 20 years of insurance paperwork? No. But its daunting. And I never seem to have the energy to finish (she says, while looking at the office floor with seven "piles" of paper to be refiled or recycled....)
What a great way to express the cycle of life as it is represented by stuff. I remember the "merger" phase when I moved in with the man who is now my husband. His condo was tiny and filled to the brim with chairs. His chairs, my chairs filled a dining room that had no table. Two gigantic pink La-Zee Boys, left behind by his ex, occupied the living room leaving very little room for the two "slipper" chairs my grandmother bequeathed to me. We could not stand or lie down but we had plenty of places to sit.