Personal clutter demons (long)

[shootingstar]

I took eleven pick-up truck loads of stuff to the local battered women's shelter. They help women start lives anew, and I had some pretty good stuff that could make it easier.

My mother cringes when she thinks of me giving away what was probably tens of thousands of dollars' worth of stuff - she's a total packrat collector - but man, it was so freeing.

I realized how anchored we are by material things. Or how much I was anyway.

If it's not blessing you or your family, let it bless someone else, and then don't think about it again. Roxy

11 truckloads of donated stuff --wow. And you weren't moving households?

I'm probably due for some material purging. When I moved from Toronto to Vancouver, I did sell off 40 books to other employees for $1 each. Gave away another 50 to a fundraising book sale for one of the church colleges.

Donated several bags of brand new fabric ends to a women's shelter/support service. I did used to sew and accumulated an extra box of brand new uncut fabric.

We no longer buy any knicknacks for home. Admittedly I vaguely cringe when we get one for a gift from others. We have more artwork than you can imagine, stuff he and I have bought from artists, paintings I've done and what his daughter had done in past few years and given to him as gifts. He won't throw it out..for obvious sentimental reasons, even though some of it I know she would write off by now, as purely experimental. I have discarded some of my own artwork..which confounds some family members.

And I have a ton of art supplies. I know for certain to whom I could give some of the stuff as well-appreciated gifts that would be used properly. But I'm hoarding the stuff since I know Muse attacks me at unexpected times in life.

In Canada, our tax laws don't allow claiming this type of hand-me down goods to charities for our personal tax saving purposes. So latter is not a motivator when we donate used personal goods.

He is neat but now it's problematic since he started up his own business. That requires some paperwork that must be kept even though he's highly disciplined going electronic as far as he can....which means more computer peripherals crowding about.