simple is best

After the excess and indulgence of Christmas
I've been thinking a lot about

  mastering the art of simplicity  

I've decided that this winter is going to be the season of cutbacks.
Ok cutbacks is perhaps the wrong word to use.
(My vocabulary seems to be escaping me these days. Too much time off? Nah. Can't be.)

My point is this:
I bought a lot of clothes in the past few months
so I have a lot of clothes.

I don't need anymore.
I have an astounding ability to convince myself that I need that
scarf/skirt/sweater/hat or whatever it is I spy upon and fall in love with.
What I need is to wear everything I have.
I need to work my way through my closet and be a bit more imaginative.
Oh and remember why I bought all of those things in the first place.
(I was in love with them once too!)

I will photograph my outfits
and may even share them here.
I started photographing outfits in the summer and it was really interesting.
Some things that looked great in the morning turned out to be total duds (ha! get it? duds!)
The outfit wasn't comfortable or flattering
and by having a photo of it, I found it easier to remember.
(clearly I previously blocked out the disasters immediately upon discarding them at the end of the day.)

So that's part 1.

It doesn't stop there.
I need to limit all unnecessary purchases.
Nail polish, housewares, you name it.
Time to use what's already here, discard what doesn't work.

Read the books I've bought already.
There is only one exception to my no spending ruling.
 I will buy any and all Richard Yates books that I find in secondhand book stores.
He is my new favorite author and I want to read the rest of his books this year.
I think there are 4 or 5 left and I am fully committed to snatching them up when I see them.

Please note: There are 21 books in this pile.
These are not all of the unread books I have -
they are just the ones that were in my bedside table and desk.
You may be thinking - didn't she get a Kobo for Christmas?
Why yes I did.
And I intend to re-activate my library card
because you can borrow/download books for free!

Use the lotions that were a gift with purchase.
Cook from those recipe books that sit on my shelf.
And the list goes on.

It's like - once I have something, I forget why I wanted it.
The shine wears off and is no longer so shiny.

To be honest, I am being a little hard on myself here.
I'm a consumer but I'm not completely wasteful
I just think that I get caught up in the longstanding tradition of believing that having that one more thing
will make my life complete.

Of course it isn't that simple.
But in the end, happiness doesn't come from things
and sometimes my abundance of things makes me unhappy.
And so it's time to balance the scales.

We need to talk about the basement....

There is only so long a person can go
and continue avoiding the one thing that fills them with dread the most.

The basement.

Our house has an apartment in the basement.
We don't rent it out and thank goodness we don't because

A) It's filled with crap

B) It's positively freezing down there in the winter. I don't know how anyone could ever have lived down there, much less made someone pay to live down there. It's inhumane.

We'd rather never have to rent it but it's great to think if we just fixed it up a bit (and put in a heat source) that we could use it as a fall back.
So. The basement.

It's easy for me to ignore the basement because I don't spend a lot of time down there (because of both A and B above) but also because of this:

See that?

Bins and bins of my past.

Stacked to the ceiling.

Let's take a closer look shall we?

It contains such favorites as this:

Fisher-Price playhouse circa 1974.

It's in really good condition too...

 I love this playhouse. I will find a place for it somewhere....

looking at this makes me feel like I might have a panic attack.

My father was/is a pack rat.

I grew up in a five bedroom house that was packed to the gills.

My mother loved her share of stuff too,

but she's been dead for almost 20 years and

my Dad took over and didn't throw anything away.

Until last year.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before.

Dad and his girlfriend decided to move 

so after being in the same house for 35 years, the big pack and purge began.

My sister made sure I got all of my stuff from his house, most of which I had forgotten existed.

She brought it up when she came to visit one weekend, a month or two before we moved into the house.

I decided I couldn't deal with the emotional part of sorting through 

faint memories of a very distant childhood, that, in some ways, I have few memories of.

Especially revisiting the sense of loss of my mother that I always feel when I take a stroll down memory lane.

So.

We bought a bunch of rubbermaid containers

and moved it.

Into the basement.

And there it still sits.

Waiting for me to sort through it.

A lot of the cardboard boxes you see are books.

We haven't built bookcases yet and so all of our books are still packed.

And we have a lot of books.

But it's time.

Believe it or not,

spring is coming.

The magazines and flowery fashions tell me so.

And when the weather warms up

I don't want to be sorting through old Barbies in the basement.

So I'm going to take a stab at it.

I never want to be a packrat. 

It makes me anxious to think of all of the stuff we have.

It's a weight around my neck

because I saw what it did to my Dad.

But the playhouse is staying.

I'll keep you posted on what else gets saved.