In the first week of this month, a single off-chance peek into a forgotten drawer of one of the pedestals beside my desk began a minor declutter. Twenty-four hours after that decision, l opted to look at the built-in cupboards and give them a clear-out. Why not, l thought, what’s the harm?
Well, have you noticed how –
The little things that are usually at the start of the big stuff signal the commencement of significant change. That simple declutter transformed into massive upheaval and the birth of the euphoria of glitzy nuts! Why glitzy nuts?
Why not.
From decluttering, it then added in furniture shift around and sales. Willow has been undergoing tremendous changes internally. Decluttering is like a mysterious contagion here, like a spreading plague of what if and what else and ooh, maybe that too!
We are entering the third week of that simple start and have concluded that everything is somewhat complex.
The house is 40% completed, but our light bulb moment a few weeks ago decided to take Willow through a complete overhaul to achieve much cleaner lines throughout the house. Less clutter, more breathing space and more sterile definition in each room. The simple start should be complete by mid-February, considering everything we have going on.
Some stuff is selling faster than others – like practical or quirky, whilst others are taking their time to move quickly. Advert manipulation and rearrangement have become my standard practice every few days. People are watching the adverts and, l guess, waiting for the drop in place to hit their sweet spot. That’s fair.
I want things gone now, and what doesn’t sell or isn’t trash or items meant for someone’s upcycling craftiness, then are bagged up and walked over to the charity shops in town.
Considering how much decluttering Suze and l have taken part in since we first began this cult of ours in 2017, l am always startled at just how much stuff there is and how much stuff still accumulates in house space. But no more, things are going for good, and we are done with hoarding stuff that might have a future somewhere in our lives.
If that ‘use’ isn’t blatantly apparent in the first sixty seconds of pondering upon it, it’s not needed, and it then experiences the ‘three R’s – reduce, reuse or recycle.
We both know that by the time we have finished this exercise, Willow will look quite bare in places, and we have accepted that is the new norm for us. We have changed as not just people or as friends or as a couple, but as personalities. We have gotten to that point where our direction is obvious.
I know what l want from my life – how l wish to see my life unfold from this point on, and Suze is the same. We are both chasing business ventures, each of our own and as a couple, which requires a clearer mind and no clutter.
The decluttering operation is a huge undertaking, not just of material items that you can touch and handle, but digitally as well – the computers are to experience a throwing out of unwanted stuff, and we, as humans, are working on a cleaner mindset—a detoxing of negativity—having a clearly defined purpose and making that happen and working towards that in a specific unified approach.
Sure, in places, everything looks like a mess here. There are things everywhere, not in a chaos theory way, but there are designated dump zones awaiting bagging to be walked over to the goodwill stores and items in separate piles awaiting buyers.
But you have to have the chaos first to see the order second. |
Earthly Comforts 