Sunday, October 29, 2006

Micro De-Cluttering, Happiness Project

I know I am never going to be able to get back the same spirit and energy I had when I first started this blog, but I am still committed to simplifying and decluttering my home and my life. I am just unable to focus on A Plan anymore. I am in a period of time that I just have to live and be and do the best I can at the moment. But I try to keep the Big Picture in mind.

The Big Picture is of me is in an environment that is pleasant and soothing, not distracting and guilt-inducing, space that invites creative thought and work.

Lately, I've been doing micro-decluttering. That's what I call it when I clean up a very small space -- not even a whole drawer, but a corner of a drawer -- in a very short time -- two or three minutes. I haven't done this in a systematic way by working on the same drawer or flat space. It's rather nice to have little spots of organized, simplified space appear here and there all over the place. They speak to me of hope....

Yesterday, I hired my daughter's boyfriend to come over and help me a bit. Together we got rid of a huge pile of cardboard boxes ( I will confess they were mostly Amazon boxes, I've been ordering a lot of books lately.) We also made some small progress in my basement work area. It was all mostly vacuuming and gathering things for the recycling center -- cardboard, old printer ink cartridges, catalogues and magazines. Then, and I think this is key, those things were taken immediately to the Goodwill recycling center.

At the last minute before he left, I suddenly saw two halogen lamps we had decided not to use YEARS ago. They had been sitting, unused, gathering inches of dust, since a hapless moth had burst into flame after flying over one, a flame that was perilously close to the basement ceiling.
We dusted them off as best we could, and off they went.

So, between the micro decluttering and the somewhat larger areas Roy and I tackled yesterday, there are spaces throughout my house that are speaking of hope quite convincingly.

This morning, through one of those serendipitous Google wanderings (that started because I googled a phrase I had in a dream), I found a blog called The Happiness Project. Oh, just go there. Look around. You'll see why I'm recommending it from this blog and why I'm going to put in a link on my sidebar. And you might be happy I sent you there!