you can't take it with you.
the image above is of an envelope i have held on to for an absurdly long amount of time, one i doodled on absentmindedly while on the phone. it is trash. i don't know why i've kept it. this is part of a larger recurring theme called Susie Can't Throw Things Out.
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in 2012, i made a couple promises to myself. call them resolutions, if you will, though i've never been one to make them before and they didn't begin at the stroke of midnight. namely, after the devastating loss of peechee i did nothing for awhile and then i decided to do something. namely diet & exercise, coupled with a resolve to read 50 new books and see 50 new movies (part of a project called fifty fifty, and previous "resolutions" still holding strong (to take a trip once a month, even just overnight to visit a friend).
all of this stuff adds up to not really "resolutions", more just "life lived more intentionally."
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so, i want to start to tackle my life's biggest challenge: clutter and organization. it's definitely not going to happen overnight, and honestly, i do love *some* "clutter" and find it generally inspirational as opposed to the stark dwellings of magazine pages. however, do i need to keep things like the doodled envelope above? how about a book someone gifted me that i am embarrassed to own and have no intention of reading? what about a bath product i tried once but found mediocre? the answer to all of the above is no.
inspired by jules's william morris project ("have nothing in your home that you do not believe to be useful or believe to be beautiful" -w.m.), it's really this post that got me. jules writes beautifully and hits the nail on the head.
You’ve heard time and again that you can’t take it with you, that in the end the stuff doesn’t matter. You know that, logically, because it’s an obvious truth. But until you pull every last thing from the recesses of an empty home and lay it out to catalog, you really have no idea.
Old tubes of mascaras. Eyeshadows. Almost empty bottles of aspirin. Expired lotions. Moth eaten sweaters. Uncomfortable sofas. Bills, paid and unpaid. Unread books. Shirts that don’t fit, are no longer in style, or you never really liked. Someone will one day run their hands over your possessions and make an assumption you won’t be there to refute.
I find it disconcerting that someone will find an empty Impressionist address book on my desk and wonder when I became a fan of Cézanne when, in truth, it was a gift from a friend I will never use. If they open my hall closet by the front door, what will they think of my piles of art and ill-fitting coats? Surely those who love me will realize I only wear the red one, even though it’s three sizes too big. And what does it say that I never took the time to alter a coat so that it fits my form in a flattering way, that I let the cuffs drag my knuckles and the waist swing wildly when I walk?
They will open my makeup drawer, pause, and then say, “I don’t remember her ever wearing green eyeshadow.”
when i asked folks on twitter about how they hold themselves accountable for their resolutions (with my diet/exercise, i use a site called MyFitnessPal; with 50/50, i use Goodreads and Pinterest, but i have no idea how to hold myself accountable for anything else) pretty much the ONLY response i got was "blog it" ie "publicly humiliate yourself."
so here i am, blogging it.
will you hold me accountable?
in 2013, i want to de-clutter my home.