THE NEW TREND IS A MINIMALIST LIFESTYLE. THIS REQUIRES LIVING WITH LESS "STUFF". IT'S SPRING, AND AS WE HIT SPRING CLEANING, I'M ONCE AGAIN RIDDING MYSELF OF "STUFF" I HAVEN'T SEEN OR USED IN THE LAST YEAR.
ARE YOU ONE THAT KEEPS EVERYTHING? ARE YOU WILLING TO WORK ON GETTING RID OF THE OLD STUFF YOU'RE NOT USING? OR WILL YOU HANG ON TO THINGS....JUST IN CASE YOU NEED THEM?
WHAT'S YOUR MIND SET ON THIS?
Ok I live in a small house (moved from 300 foot bigger space with an attic) & have to continually evaluate, reassess what helps in my life (as to what detract.) I am not phenomenal at it/ yet/ narrowing my attack to things that detract from love, art, rocks and an alter, maker's space for tools & sewing, leather work; oh, and eating & life. Changing of season, waking well after cold or the flu gets person the chance to face clutter beyond seasonal laundry to sort. When I first moved in it was just so fast & all I could do was keep working and keep the dogs fed, sage the place and move on.
Carbon footprint work: Worked for decades on storage in non disposables and food stuff served stored restored in non disposables- NEVER yet figured out where to put it place it effectively. Between uses. Reuse travel cups for decades heck of a time finding a place for them when not going out. etc. ; (sigh) worked on reworking others' fabrics, other's clothes, re using furnishings- ever heard of residual energy? thought forms or locked in place connecting to thing or place? that's been a nice toss up between trying not to use all new to avoid over taking from the planet but... so.
Definitely living with someone else dancing around roles, revising or advertising new roles each day is not especially advisable. Randomly capturing your partners stuff or having your spouse randomly halve your tool collection because where you put the box before you left for work isn't helping anyone anyways.
i realized he was tired one season, and reasonably depressed, so began tossing his tools into the spare room whenever he left it on the floor or in a box next to his boots right in the hall way. Found out that didn't work when he kept buying new power drills. Thought I was getting even tossing them into the room wasn't serving anybody, he couldn't pick his drill up getting his boots on and going out to the truck (despite I didn't like it left on the floor) so he got a new one at ***** on the way home from work. Again and again until there were power drills in both trucks, beneath the table in the old 5th wheel, and in the toool box at the end of the hall (next to the file cabinets put in place to catch bullets/ dodge bullets from drive bys placed strategically on the place near out heads between us and the street. don't ask neighbors with opposing gang colors in somebody elses ethnic street gangs caticorner along the street this run down housing tract caused a neighbors' SUV shot up, & there's bullet holes in the stucco.Having routines does matter. But when the Ca fire burned down family's business and respite retreats via family homes further north, decimated dreams of retiring on the cheap in state for my husband and me... and the partner whose family homes burned had dreams go up in smoke and stopped picking up their stuff for about four months picking up fitfully. lol I think its something we can move on from, not permanent. folks go through stages when dealing with grief.
Now I see past cluttered onto a shelf untouched and present literally piling on cedar chest by cat stand beside me.
When in a past qi gong circle I found myself repetitively scrubbing the kitchen floor after every meal made, cleaning every pan before serving. (& I asked myself awake for an instant as I insanely was drug across the kitchen to scrub down the floor : whose energy IS this (it certainly doesn't belong to me) as I was drug away from my writing, graphite flailing falling to side as I dropped it tossed on table easel counter by a trashcan which my arms were desperately trying to empty ) call this: empath goes to qi gong class (I'm sure it was not deliberate was it/on anybody's part, in the class, was it)
but HEY I am glad for the tiny vegan dry good supply that influence gave me. Makes great soup.
Ok so, its a drive to create clash with got no house servant & never will. Plus farm is in the past- the family's old barn & spare garage and trailer are gone when dad died & sold the farm. So life style challenged. Its beyond no vineyards- past no sipping a drink swimming in the polluted south valley haziness at sunset with a farm dog at my feet... its a nother life style to adapt to- not being the town kid with parents farm to drive out to ...and no place for their stuff. wow spoiled. But I miss it.
So that said, how to order support stuff / tools. I have been known to loose files storing writing / finished poetry/ finished and draft stories & revisions when I tried to go digital. Has to be transparent, or routinely stored. Need to know what I am reaching for, where it will be or it will truly be lost from me. Might wakeup and know an unknowing/not know it every exist(ed)... now that's creative flow for you. So I put an anchor harbor freight tool chest to anchor writing stuff instead of a desk, a 'writing laptop' and learned a filedescriptor date genre style, version number file name system I try to use faithfully. Where to put/how to file written and partial revisions.
I know I need a shelf with inexpensive sale tapestry or leather scraps or fabric bundle (ten yard boxes of random 15 dollar total cost of fabric) to rummage through and make or sew when the mood flows through my heart into my fingertips. I finally did get make a leather stiff tote and filled it with random embroidery floss in tiny bags lest they tangle to stir and reach deep and pull up another flowers' color depicting all the things that could be, might be, beautiful to me, instead of what might have been or was once of beauty in life around me. That's at my feet to the right in my living room chair and needs to be. I know I do not need past furnishings or past clothes in the space. Finding a flow where kitchen which is repetitive but not constant part of my life now I am an 'empty nester' compared with a constant kids present caretaker the kitchen it has need and it, has its place, LET the experiences which are part of my life be maximized instead.
its like a rubix cube shifting the pattern from one stage of life to the next
So tools need, need to be stored predictibly I have learned. have you ever poked yourself in the finger with a pair of scissors stored on end? that feels terrible. So I actually made scissor case, it actually happened. Have you ever lost your glasses> So Now I try to keep cheap online glasses with RX strategically placed. Its like rocks and crystals- did you know when I moved some years back an unnamed other actually put them into boxes, packed? and wanted to leave them there? I did not feel at home until I had chimes and rocks and Sierra rock filled urn for incense out however cluttered the man's cowboy boots Wecos oxfords & random Berkenstocks on the floor nearby are. Still got to have priorities.
