The Great De-Stuffing continues, somewhat hampered by the terribly cold weather we're having in Nova Scotia. I've been closing off the upstairs of the house so that the wood stove has a better chance of heating the living room and kitchen, and that means that some days it is simply too cold to do any sorting work upstairs and I'm forced to sit downstairs by the fire, crocheting and watching Portlandia. Forced, I tell you.
Despite the cold, though, things have started to leave my house. Fortunately, some of my friends are moving into new homes at the same time as I am trying to get rid of lots of my stuff. One of my friends came and took two of my bookshelves (of the seven I own). And other friends are coming, probably next week, to take away a bureau, desk, filing cabinet and two other bookshelves.
This feels exciting. I will get a chance to experiment with living with my clothes in baskets tucked under my bed, before I even get into my Tiny Home. I'm hoping this will help me choose what to keep and what to sell/gift/donate or, as a last resort, throw away.
Of course, for now, the contents of these pieces of furniture are spilling out on to the floor. I'm planning some kind of massive sale/donation/gift-a-thon in the spring, but I have to sort everything first and that is going to be the true challenge. I'm not attached to most of my furniture. Very little of it came with me from Toronto, so it's mostly odds and end that I have picked up in the past three years. I will have enough room in the Tiny Home for the pieces that are important and/or sentimental to me: my bed, desk, one bookshelf and an arm chair/ottoman combo. But the "stuff" is much harder to deal with. I'm very attached to most of it, since it survived the big sort I did before I moved here from Toronto.
And, at the same time, I'm excited to let go of it.
For some reason this week, people keep posting on FB and sending me links to videos and blog posts (like this one) about how overwhelming modern society is for our little human brains. That's how I feel about my stuff, especially the paper. It overwhelms me. Sure, some of it is necessary. As the sole proprietor of the business of my life, I have to keep records. But most of it is outdated. I have, for example, all of the statements for a pension plan I left behind in 2002. I've held on to a lot of paper like that out of a habit that pre-dates the ready availability of information on the Internet, and out of a paralysis that has kept me from making a decision about it.
The time has come. The decision is forced.
I predict that there will be a great big document bonfire in my future.
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