Big Piles of Stuff

We are having a yard sale tomorrow, and I keep telling my husband, “Aren’t you happy?” when we look at the amount of stuff I have found to get rid of. After all, I am the sentimental one in our relationship who holds onto everything, and I am the one who has hobbies that require stuff. On the other hand, he would be fine with a TV and only enough mementos to fill a shoe box.  

Getting together all this stuff has felt so good, and I even plan to find more to sell before tomorrow. I know it’s cliché, but it feels so good to try to simplify things a bit. I like to open cabinets and see everything inside and not feel stressed out. I like being in control of my space instead of the other way around.

While doing this massive purge, I even picked out several of my old diaries to throw away (not to sell in the yard sale!) I’m only keeping the ones that I truly would enjoy going back and reading, or ones I want our son to have. But no one needs to read about my teenage angst, and reading it myself just stresses me out. (I was that insecure? Yuck!) And instead of keeping my whole journal from when I moved to Vegas, I tore out a few interesting pages about auditions I attended. It’s my history, but I don’t need to save every word.

So, here in this photo is my stack of journals that went to the recycling pile. And I don’t feel bad about letting them go. That is the best part of all.