With Ashleigh sick and Maddie grounded, I had a lot of free time this weekend to get things done around the house. Given some unfortunate circumstances, our house has become a bit of a warehouse. My garage is filled with my wife's old possessions and my basement is filled with my mother's stuff from New Jersey. Even without these things, we have too much stuff.
Over the past couple of weeks I have taken steps to rectify this situation. There is still a lot to do though! This weekend I cleaned out three boxes of stuff from the garage and got rid of a large plastic bag filled with junk. My daughter and I also put up a number of items for sale on the Rindge Tag Sale Treasures group page. Most of the items were put up at prices ranging from $1 for a pair of earrings, to $3 for a purse or a pair of shoes. All together, we sold about $28 in merchandise. What doesn't sell online we will bring to a flea market in June and try to sell there. Yesterday, while watching a cartoon with Ashleigh, I started cleaning out the drawers underneath my bed. In general, I wear jeans and T shirts nearly every day, broken up with an occasional sweat shirt or polo shirt. There are only so many of these that anyone needs, particularly since I have a tendency to wear my favorite ones over and over again. Still clothes have a tendency to pile up, so I made sure to go through it with a critical eye to get rid of stuff that I felt I would never wear again. I was very successful! I got rid of a full garbage bag of shirts that I felt I would never wear again. I also gave away my denim jacket, that I have worn every winter for the past 10 years or so. It was literally falling apart around my shoulders! The cuffs were frayed and there were holes along the collar and sleeves. One of the button holes had ripped open from over use, and the color had faded from a deep blue, to almost white with stains of gray from putting my elbows down on dirty things (I guess). Regardless of how the holes and stains got there, I decided it was time to retire the jacket. I will now have to go out and buy a new one, or use one of the many jackets that I have. As for the shirts, the oldest one that I got rid of that I know for certain was from 1992. I know this because it had the year printed on the front! Some of the shirts may have been older! Some of the shirts had barely ever been worn. Others had been worn a lot, but were now too big for me...I have lost about 65 pounds over the past year and a half! Cleaning out my library has also been a chore. I love to read and I likely have about a thousand books. Some of these books I felt I would never read again, so I donated those to the library to make room for newer books that I had bought, but hadn't read yet. We also keep a well-stock reference section to our library. My room, the library, the garage, the basement all have seen my handiwork over the past two weeks. Although we all likely have places in our homes that need Spring cleaning, one of the most important places to do an occasional cleaning is your mind! Without careful attention, our minds get filled with old, worn out ideas that no longer fit the people we are. I notice that some things that used to make me laugh, no longer do. Stories about idiots getting drunk and doing stupid things no longer make me crack a smile. I no longer care what is on the idiot box or what people think of what happened on "the shows". I no longer worry about what is in style, or what new restaurants have opened up that I "just have to try!" I guess the best Spring cleaning anyone can do is stripping away the nonsense that passes for importance in our own minds. The more I inspect my own beliefs, the more I see how much stuff that I cared about never really mattered anyway. The most important things are right in front of us! Nothing we see on TV really matters...it is all illusion! What bars I went to or what beaches or what (fill in the blank) I did never mattered! Who I did these things with is what mattered. It's sad that often times we unconsciously felt that it was better to do the things we did in an altered state of mind. "Meet for drinks?". No thanks, I am way past that! I will meet somewhere to have a nice conversation, but whether you drink and I have a soda matters very little to me.Some people can never see past the clutter in their own heads. It makes me sad. I am happy that I have cleared some of the clutter in my own head. It's an ongoing project. A Spring cleaning of the mind is far more important than any progress you can make in your basement or garage!
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