Spring Cleaning

a (sort of) pathway to inner peace

When the girls were little, we amassed a lot of stuff. We’ve always been thrifters (for the sake of the planet and also the sake of our pocketbooks.) So, for us,“stuff” was always cheap: toys, clothes, crafting paraphernalia, furniture, kitchen stuff and on and on. Over the last 18 years, I’ve saved most everything the kids made (drew, collaged, beaded, wrote, sewed, built) and, I saved lots of their baby clothes too. Also, all their childhood books. About 500 of them in total. My dad is a bookseller and I inherited his love of books. We read every one of those books by the way. Every single one. Over and over. (So HOW could I ever get rid of those precious books?)

Then a a few months ago, something happened. Call it a midlife awakening or menopause - either way, the urge to purge hit me with the weight of 500 books! Since then, with slow and steady precision, I have been gutting our past.

It started this tax season with paperwork - tidy piles of receipts, bills and other paper clutter all got filed or thrown away. Then, I started on rooms. One by one, decluttering all the stuff. Lots was taken to the local thrift. And if something was clearly needed, I scoured Facebook Marketplace until I found it: a clean, small white desk, a modern gold framed mirror, a beautiful pink wooden chest (for the 16 year old.)

The shelves of books have been subjected to several pass throughs with a few weeks in between for clearing my head. As for the kids books I am keeping maybe half and storing the rest away. As for my own books, I only reorganized them (in a way that only a booksellers daughter can do.)

Seriously though friends, this bit of cleansing is but the tip of the iceberg. Ahead are: all the closets. (Ew.) Cupboards. (Agh!!) And ….the garage. (Nooooooo!) The garage holds all the plastic bins of stuff I’ve saved since the girls were tots. I am prepping myself.

Currently, I’m working on my 18 year-olds room (she comes home from college next month for the Summer.) And ahead of that I have my 16 year-olds room. Not for the faint of heart, but on the plus side I will likely find all our water glasses. And possibly a sandwich from last week. It’s an opportunity for rubber gloves, quite frankly. If you have a teen, you get it.

Focused minimizing: looking at each object and deciding if it has a purpose or if it should be passed on or tossed. Transitioning. Knowing that my children are becoming adults and all things that were once put into bins for saving must now be sorted through. Awe-inspiring genius artwork by preschool-aged children (pinecones glued to cardboard) will be assessed and valued appropriately. (Goodbye, Picasso.)

Making space for both my mind and the next phases of life, I strive for utter organization. I know I’ll likely fail the utter and have to settle on fair. But no! I won’t think that way! This is a new chapter. A process. And soon to be, a lifestyle.

It might take me 6 months to do this. But it’s a beautiful process. It’s something to figure out. A place to put my thoughts. Away from the craziness of the world, away from the stress of teen parenthood and the hot flashes of middle-age I quietly ask myself: do we need this old cutting board? And I really think about it before I decide. Is it needed? Or not? It calls for inner stillness, a request for guidance and a moment of meditation. It calls for clarity and honesty. It calls for a trash can.