40 Bags In 40 Days
Frankly, I don't know why she looks so stressed.
If all I had to worry about was champagne, luxury automobiles, nail polish and pineapples, I'm pretty sure my life would be 100% easier.
Lent started yesterday and while I'm not a particularly religious person, every year around this time I do have a "Come to Jesus" moment where I feel the need to completely and totally purge my house. The 40 Bags in 40 Days challenge was something I first read about here, at Sara's blog, Clover Lane. She has it down to a science - almost to the point where she has nothing left to purge, which makes me super envious. Somehow my home is like the eye of a tornado - picking up mass accumulations of a random variety of items throughout the year. To begin I make a list of areas to focus on and I do my best to tackle at least one of them every day. Yesterday it was the TV/family room and a bit of the kitchen. I ended up with nearly three bags of garbage and an enormous sense of accomplishment.
I have to admit, I am a slow starter. At first I will decisively throw things away without question, but those are the easy things like actual garbage, old magazines and broken crayons. As the process continues, I have a terrible habit of ruminating on things for just enough time that a margin of doubt creeps in and I hesitate pulling the trigger. When that happens, I tell myself, "Pretend you are packing to move out of this house. Do you really want to bring this *thing* with you?" That's usually the tipping point for me. Nothing severs emotional ties or generates motivation like the thought of having to pack/haul/unpack something.
In truth, I wish I were living a much more spartan life. While I am grateful to have a nice home that more than accommodates our large family, it is in essence, more room than we really need. With more room comes more stuff and with more stuff comes more chaos and aggravation. So much excess clutter makes it difficult to navigate the day. It's hard to be efficient or scheduled when it takes 10 minutes to locate a working pen and another 15 to find two socks that match. My mind is already running 1,000 miles a minute and I have a highly distractable personality, so when things around me are scattered and disorganized, it literally makes me feel insane.
Unfortunately, the rest of my family doesn't share my need for order. Every year I engage in this project and weeks later they all undo all of my hard work despite my best efforts to train them otherwise. It's frustrating, but then I imagine how insane this place would be if I didn't do my yearly purge, and it gives me the motivation I need to do it all over again. Plus, isn't most of mothering an exercise in futility??
Today I'm going to focus on something smaller, like the kids' bathroom so I can avoid feeling overwhelmed. It's not a fun job, but it's preferable to the alternative, which is a featured role on "Hoarders."