Nostalgia and Letting Go

Late last year, I came across an article about a book called "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter".

I am all about organizational books, I've read Peter Walsh and Marie Kondo (although I think she might be a bit over the top, I'm not going to thank my purses for doing their jobs), but the philosophy behind this book seemed to resonated with me from the article I read, so I finally downloaded it a week or so ago to see what the author has to say.  It's only 71 pages so it should take me long.  I'll report back on that once I've finished.

I'm not concerned about clutter, I run a pretty tight ship in that respect, I'm talking about things I'm hanging on to that I really need to let go.

I'm entering a phase in my life that I feel the need to really purge and downsize.   Even my spouse has an area of our garage that really needs a some purging.  We're not downsizing our space at this time, but I'm currently downsizing some of our "things".

I'm always going to have "things" in my home.  I love to decorate and I love to be surrounded by pictures and décor that makes me happy, brings back memories or tells a story, but we owe it to our son not to saddle him with having to get rid of a bunch of stuff he doesn't want, so.........

The obstacles that I'm running into are all nostalgic and who it belonged to originally.  I have things of both my mothers and grandmothers but some of it just sits in drawers, closets or the basement.  I have to learn to let go.  I'll never get rid of the beautiful quilts and cross stitch pieces that my mother made me, but I have fabric of hers I need to let go.   I'll also never get rid of the cobalt blue juice glasses that were my grandmother's that one of us uses everyday, but I have silver pieces of hers that I need to let go.  I could go on and on.

Since retiring from my full time career, I've completely gone through every stitch of clothing we own and what we have left in the house are the things we wear, there's no more hanging on to any professional clothes I had or things neither of us were wearing anymore.  Several non-profits that provide clothing for men and women for job interviews benefited from our castoffs and our clothing is now manageable.  That also includes shoes and purses that I no longer wore.

I've also purged our seasonal decorations a couple years ago, but we still have quite a bit.  Thankfully it's all nicely packed away in totes that are labeled, easy to store and move.

So, stay tuned for a future post on what I learned from the book.......