This is all of “my (John’s) stuff.” I say “my stuff” because there is lots of stuff that I consider “our (family) stuff.” I don’t know what gets into me sometimes but every so often I have these urges to just surge ahead and do something.
This latest urge came from the an early morning workout session. I have a pull-up bar in my closet. Every other day I get up and I attempt to do a full pull-ups on the bar. It is a pretty pathetic attempt, but due to the position on the bar I am forced everyday to look at all the junk in my closet. Somehow in the brief moment of pulling up on the bar I decided I wanted to get rid of all the junk in my closet. You would think I would have done something right there and then, but I didn’t. However, the idea just kept nagging me in my head, but I didn’t act on it. Kind of a weird concept if you think about it.
Anyhow, a few days later I am sitting on my bed and I am again staring at my closet and I decide “right now I am going to go and throw away a box of stuff!” So, I get up take down the first box I can see and a picture falls out of it. Bad move, turns out the picture was interesting, which led me to open the box and find more interesting pictures. I decided I wanted to keep some of the stuff, but I still have a strong urge to purge my stuff so I decided I was going to force myself to at least look at all of my stuff.
In the process of looking at all my stuff I have noted that I do indeed have lots of stuff. I think everyone has lots of stuff. I guess we accumulate stuff for all kinds of reasons, but in thinking it about it, it just is stuff. I have pretty much come to the conclusion that stuff needs to be useful and when it is no longer useful it needs to be removed.
Luckily, I have found lots of ways to reorganize my stuff. I think my best weapon for reorganizing my stuff is to digitize it. A lot of stuff can be either scanned or I can take a picture of it, and it is almost as good as having the original item. I still have a long way to go but everytime I get rid of something it makes me strangely a little bit happier. As of right now I can put all of “my stuff” in my side of the closet. I have two containers under the bed as well, but I could put it on my side of the closet if I wanted to. I still want to continue to purge my stuff, but I am not exactly sure how much more stuff I want to purge. I would really like to one day get an exact count of what I have.
This reminds me of Grandma K. She used to giggle at how we’d call our things “stuff,” as if we were marginalizing our possessions, discounting their value in some way. She could never say the word “stuff” without making it sound like she was putting quotation marks around it. Anyway, I know that feeling of wanting to purge. I go through something like that every now and then, and it feels really good. Good luck!