Lightening My Load

[Dawn70]

First and foremost, speaking as someone living in a high stress situation with reduced income, TAKE THE VACATION! By all means, include your kids, but if they can't or don't want to go, go anyway. I'm telling you, if I had the means at all at the moment, I would be OUT of here even if it was just for a couple of days. Do it....you deserve it!

As far as the letting go and purging, I know exactly what you mean. Monday, I focused on finishing up getting our living room decorated (unpacking boxes of pictures and knick knacks that were stored in the back bedroom in the process) and I also cleaned out the small coat closet in the living room that we had just opened the door and shoved a couple of boxes in. I purged stuff that was mine, stuff that was Sparky's, stuff that I have no clue who it belonged to but it isn't ours anymore. LOL It was a GREAT sense of accomplishment.

When I divorced and moved from our marital home to a much smaller (and super cute) duplex, I purged a crap ton of stuff. Some of it was stuff I had owned prior to my marriage, some was stuff we accumulated together that he left because he just didn't want to deal with it. We had personalized Christmas tree ornaments and wedding decor and all kinds of stuff like that. Some got thrown in the trash, some got taken to the local thrift store, some got given directly to people who could use it. When I get ready to move here a few years ago, I went through and did an even harder purge so as not to move a bunch of stuff that never gets used. Much to the dismay of some, I threw out all my old high school yearbooks. Why was I keeping those? It wasn't like I sat around looking through them. It was just something else that my kids would have to go through some day and discard because they wouldn't want to keep them since they wouldn't know most of the people. It was very freeing!

My Monday project coming up next week is to start to tackle the cabinets in the dining room. There are some nice built in cabinets that I know are just full of stuff that belonged to Sparky's grandmother, so some of my boxes with seasonal serving ware, a set of Christmas dishes handed down by one of my favorite aunts, and other such items are still boxed in a closet in the utility room because I have no place to store them. We are letting that ish go! There are a few pieces Sparky mentioned wanting to keep for sentimental reasons, but much of it will go to our local thrift store. We are also putting together a large box of odds and ends for the daughter of one of my former co-workers and friend whose daughter's house burned down last weekend. So, even if it isn't stuff that is her taste, it will be stuff she can use to get by until they can get settled again and start rebuilding their own stuff.

I don't have nearly the issue I used to have in getting rid of physical stuff. I get rid of stuff all the time, which is why Sparky has to let me make the final cull decisions (he holds on to the weirdest stuff!) but mentally....well, THAT is a whole other question....................LOL I won't hijack any further to respond to that other than to say there is a whole crap ton of stuff I could likely benefit from letting go of mentally.