The Purge

The Great Purge of 2009 continues. But, I am finally starting to feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel as I am rounding out just about one calendar year of slowly but surely changing our lifestyle.

I have been keeping a little inventory (my little black book) of all the things we own. It's sometimes frightening, shocking, and a little sickening to think that we own so many thousands of things that we don't even know what they all are.

This little notebook contains all my purge secrets and, in the spirit of reduce/reuse/recycle it's really an old calendar from 2007 that I never got around to using as a calendar.

Many things have been sold, many things have been donated, and many many things have been given away or sent to people who will give them good homes.

We started with a goal of creating a little "TV fund" to buy one of those big TVs everybody has been talking about. Through craigslist and ebay and not-just-a-little-bit through less wanting and less shopping and cooking at home, we have built a little pile that's more than big enough to buy one of those TVs but we haven't spent it yet. We've saved a lot of money by leading a less consuming lifestyle. I am now much more the kind of person who would rather spend good money on one really nice "thing X" or "thing Y" than buy 100 cheap versions of "thing A-Z".

We have less cleaning to do, less maintenance of "things", and less time spent simply dealing with the things we own. I have fewer choices, really narrowed down to things I need, love, and enjoy, so my mind is worried over fewer decisions. It's amazing how much peace having less stuff has brought.

My goal has been to get rid of 5 things every week. Many weeks have seen the departure of way more than 5things. I haven't yet reached the point of a zero-sum household but it's out there.

This week, I feel like I can see that the tide has shifted because I had to actively go looking for the things that needed to go and they all turned out to be bits of random things: a box of straight pins that are too small for me to sew with, push pins that I've had about 17 years, two cans of spray paint, a half-used bottle of febreze, a random little bag of jewelry I don't like and never wear, some of my massive collection of stationary, and three balls of "yarn" I made from old t-shirts.