For the last year I have been slowly letting go of old, unused, unnecessary, and outdated items and memories. I have cleaned out my closets, shredded old love letters, old receipts and expired documents. I cleaned out my file cabinet, gave away paperback books, and even threw out some pictures that were duplicates (omg I threw away pictures of the kids!). I have cleared out old stuff from my computer that I don’t have a clue why I saved. Today I cleaned out the “drafts” in my email account. I clicked them open and then wondered why in heck I kept them, these old, weird, disjointed messages I started to write that made no sense. One day I spent a long time just going back over four years of emails in my 14-year-old email account that I had kept, deleting a ton of them until I was down to less than two pages of emails. Massive job. Some I am still deciding whether to keep as I want to get it down to one page. A month ago I took in a bunch of stuff to sell at work from my craft room. I gave my daughter some more stuff to sell on eBay.
It’s amazing how much stuff we accumulate. I remember when this big old house was pretty empty. It’s got stuff in every corner now. Most of it is forgotten. A lot of it is not mine though. One of my favorite bits by George Carlin is this one…
I have told many people not to buy me anything over the last few years, I don’t need anything nor do I want anything, especially not this year. (Plus, I don’t want to have to decide what to do with it in a month!) So I hope if someone gives me something, it’s a gift card that I can spend elsewhere or give to my daughter.
Some of the stuff I can’t do a thing about clearing out until the last week before I leave as it involves my cold weather items. It’s muy frio! (very cold) here and I still need boots and gloves and coats and sweaters and long johns and…and..and. You get the picture if you live in a four season climate! LOL.
Even with all of this clearing out, there is still so much here that I don’t know what to do with yet. I hope my husband is kind enough to not just toss stuff away due to emotions because a lot of it is pertinent to his life, too. Or that he will keep it for me until I can get it moved out permanently.
Most of my clearing out over the last few years involves what goes on inside. I have let go of so much. Attachments to outcome, attachments to people and their reactions to me, old memories that made me sad or angry, expectations, old programming. I know now that what others choose to do or say or react is their choice and has nothing to do with me. Little by little, I feel free-er and more relaxed in myself. When you don’t have this imaginary plot that you expect others to follow and then don’t, you don’t get set up for disappointments or hurt feelings. When you don’t drag the past into your current moment, then the current moment is far easier to live. No expectations of outcome are running in the background so whatever happens is perfect. Or as Eloheim says, What is, IS. Not to say that I don’t still don’t harbor expectations, but I can recognise them far quicker as they occur and can then change the choice of how I react.
So even though there is still much physical clearing left to do, it is far easier than it would have been had I not done so much internal clearing first. This next month is going to be busy on all fronts, that’s for sure.
http://lifeheartandsoulblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/a-place-for-my-stuff/
