Learning to Purge…….and loving it!
I never really considered myself a pack rat, I just had a lot of stuff. But being a good Virgo it was all well organized, boxed or filed and tucked away in its own little place. I knew exactly where everything was (or so I thought) and it all was quite neat and tidy. Seven years ago I couldn’t imagine getting rid of any of my stuff, after all I was quite proud of my system.
The first sign of things to come happened on October 26, 2003. That Sunday morning I woke to find a huge cloud of smoke blowing just southwest of our home. Within a few hours a wild fire ripped through our quiet suburban neighborhood. We were forced to evacuate, but we were lucky enough to have time to fill the cars with stuff. Many of my neighbors were not as lucky, 343 of them lost their homes that day and many of those had just enough time to get themselves to safety as their homes went up in flames. As we made our way to safety through the traffic jam of evacuees, I couldn’t help but think about what it would be like if I never saw our home or our stuff again. What came to me caught me completely by surprise. Instead of sadness for the loss of all of our things, what I felt was a strange sense of release, a sense of freedom. It was a very odd feeling, especially for me, especially for the moment. But the thought and the feeling passed quickly. When we were let back into our neighborhood, our home was still standing. We were among the lucky ones. Still, there was a lot to deal with in the weeks to follow and this strange moment of revelation would have to be tucked away until I would have time to reflect on it.
It took another life shake up four years later to bring me my next lesson. My twenty two year marriage ended and our big beautiful home with all the wonderful storage space would have to be sold. We had lived in this home for ten years and it took me two weeks to empty the house of all the stuff that we had accumulated. The first thing I did was rent a large dumpster and had it placed in the driveway. Then I started the sorting process. The categories were “moving it”, “donating it”, “selling it” or “dumping it”. I had no idea how much fun and how freeing it could be to throw things in that dumpster! Nor did I have a clue on how much crap we had saved just because we had the room to do so. The garage was the worst. For example, we found lawn irrigation piping that we had left over from when we put the yard in the first year we lived there. We had tucked the spare parts away for any repairs that would surely need to be made over the years. The problem was that by the time the repairs did indeed need to be made, we had forgotten that we had the spare parts and we went out and bought them again. So much for my highly organized Virgo system!
Moving out of that home was a daunting task. I was completely over whelmed by the amount of stuff that we had packed into this place. For the first time in my adult life I was doing some serious down-sizing of my stuff. I filled up the dumpster, sold several truck loads and donated even more. When it was finished I felt like I was lighter, freer and ready to take on my new life. But the truth was that I still had a lot of stuff. The biggest issue was the holiday boxes. I had large tubs of decorations for each holiday. There was one each for Easter and Thanksgiving, three for Halloween and about fourteen for Christmas. Letting go of the holiday decorations was absolutely unthinkable. Even at the cost of renting a storage unit for all of it, and let me tell you, storage space here in San Diego isn’t cheap! Eventually I ended up purchasing industrial shelving units which my son helped me erect in one half of the garage of my small townhome. We then moved the stuff from the storage unit to its new home and I was quite happy again to have my stuff near me and well organized, at least for awhile.
I’m not sure when it started. It was slow at first, just the occasional thought as I would pass through the garage. But those thoughts came more and more frequently as time passed. As I would pull into the garage to park my truck I would look at the well organized mountain of stuff and think, “Do I really need all of this?” By last Christmas I was ready to pare down the Christmas decorations to at least half. What I lacked was the time to go through all of the boxes and decide what I would keep and what would have to go. Also, where would it go? There were memories attached to all of this stuff, I needed to find it all a good home. So, Christmas passed and all the boxes stayed neatly on their shelves and the thoughts of freeing myself from it all kept coming. When my partner, Lori moved in I found myself embarrassed about the mountain of stuff that I had saved and I found myself making excuses for all of it. She had some things that we also needed to store. We were able to get it all in but now it wasn’t quite so organized. In fact, it seemed that it was requiring constant attention to keep it all from over taking the whole garage. It was draining more and more of my energy and I needed to take care of it.
The day after Thanksgiving I rolled up my sleeves and headed to the garage. I went through every tub of decorations and saved only those pieces that were very special to us. I had arranged for my friend Amy to come the next day and take the rest away. Amy has three young children and three sisters who also have young children. They were very happy to take over my treasure trove of holiday booty. In the end I eliminated at least 70% of all of the decorations. But the best part was that I knew it was all going to homes where they will create their holiday magic for another generation of children. It feels wonderful to have it all gone. I had no idea how much stuff can weigh you down. I have learned a powerful lesson about just how draining stuff can be. Oh, I still have a lot of stuff, but now I have the willingness to keep going through it all and keep freeing myself of what I no longer need, and now I have a much clearer definition of exactly what “need” means.
Blessings, Kelly
