Soap Box

I will never write a book, I think, but I can't not write.  Therefore, I will write on the internet and feel a faint (very faint) thrill of hope that someone will read this and gets a little something from what I write.  It's like a journal, with benefits.

Here I shall mount my soap box and discuss, wait for it ... the balance between taking advantage of freebies and amazing deals vs. being a minimalist.

My personality is dichotomous and I imagine so do many people.  On the one hand I am a staunch tightwad and believe in taking advantage of as many free things as possible because well, they're free.  But when I see that I have three stuffed to overflowing bins of baby clothes for each and every month of infancy I need to make a decision.  Either, I need to open a consignment store in my garage or I need to filter a bit of the freebies.  It isn't just the hand-me-downs that add up.  We also have those fun thrift store finds that really are useful (ish) or those great buys or even those not so great moments of splurging. What I am getting at here is that there seems to be so much ...  what's the word I am searching for? Ah yes, crap. There is so much crap around that we are spending more time thinking of clever ways to store them than actually using them.  That's a red flag right there.

I love to see those cavernous loft-like homes in magazines where it is quite clear that the home owners keep only the items that they truly use and love and scrap the unimportant things that weigh them down.  I love that.  There is a chance, I realize, that these people don't actually exist or that they do and they store mountains of worldly possessions under their beds and rental storage facilities.
 
The excess extends to every member of my family.  I am a bibliophile and a thrift store junky.  A very bad coupling of vises right there.  Books are wonderful on so many levels; they grow the mind and they are lovely and when amassed and displayed they make you look to well-read and cool.  Then when you go to a thrift store where they sell clothes by the pound and kitchen things are pennies, things get ugly. And don't get me started on Ikea.  Sheesh.  Enough of me, my husband (the avid musician among many other things) probably has 15 guitars, two mandolins, an organ, a violin and an endless array of music equipment.  Really? Is that necessary? Then there are my darling children who have so many toys that it took two trips to move them all in the back of a large pick up truck during our last move.  Bin and bins of toys.  Every boy toy known to man; great educational toys, gobs of legos, animals, broken Happy Meal toys, swords, guns, costumes ... you name it they've got it.  Things have gotten out of hand around here.  Here is where I put "less is more" into practice.

For the past two months I have been feeling very claustrophobic with all of this clutter.  We live in a darling little rental house.  It is a sweet thing, so quaint but so so small when compared with the lovely, spacious flat we rented last.  Every square inch is used and reused and has been overtaken by things.  Having three boys results in a world of mess and chaos plus, as you know, small spaces are harder to keep tidier than larger ones.  Even if everything has a place, if just five things are out of place it gets kind of harry.  I, therefore, have been going from one room to the next getting rid of mounds and mounds of things.  I'm telling you, this is time to be brutal.  If I haven't worn or used it in six to twelve months it's out.  Once I started and got momentum things got to happening.  The garage is filling with unwanted things to be yard saled.

The kids were not so easy to persuade.  But after haggling and bargaining on every single G.I. Joe and torn stuffed animal we came up with a decent amount of toys to be rid of.  Then in the dark of the night I snuck all of the broken and unplayed with things that they didn't want to part with into a black trash bag and covertly donated them.  They never saw if coming.

My husband apparently didn't get the memo.  He is getting rid of exactly, nothing.  He did however stand behind my new decree that for every new item that enters our door one needs to leave in it's place.  For example, if I am tempted to buy yet another sweater I will have to get rid of one of my others.  Makes a person think twice.

I am not finished, but nearly.  As I wade through everything I breath steadily and chant in a monotone mantra, "less is more, less is more".  The results are wonderful.  More space, more room to breath.  Oh yes, this is the beginning of a beautiful thing.