It’s easy for our closets to become graveyards of misguided purchases. – Erin Boyle, author of Simple Matters
You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy hunting gear and that’s kind of the same thing. – Anonymous
Well, I guess it’s time to get busy after several months spent inside enduring cold, ice and rain. Rain was greatly appreciated, bringing out the greening of grasses, a few plants and across the previously brown fields. Daffodils emerged and were brought inside to bring a bit of color to the breakfast table. Daffodils are friendly flowers; lifting the spirit. We have about four more weeks until spring really sets in. I use this time to go about the house, the closets transitioning from one season to another. It’s a time for purging or packing away. For those who deer hunt during the past season all the warm winter gear is checked, evaluated, donated, or packed away for another day. Spring turkey season will follow on March 8 for youth and later on the 15th for older folks. Out comes similar lighter weight hunting clothing presumably put away neatly the season before.
I have three books I review for decluttering. In 2014 Marie Kondo came out with her “The life-changing magic of tidying up.” Marie does what I would consider rather a severe way of decluttering. Something like choosing a particular area and removing everything. Yes, everything. Clearing out everything is overwhelming, but it’s worked for Marie and many others. Once you have everything out of your clothes closet, your coat closet, shoes, the chest-of-drawers, you can evaluate what you would like to keep and what you’d like to donate, give to a friend or eliminate. Marie takes the operation a little further: “The number of things my clients have discarded, from clothes and undergarments to photos, pens, magazine clippings, makeup samples, easily exceed a million items.” Marie says people who use her system never revert to clutter again. I confess while I do declutter, I still have to do it again.
While planning for a trip in the future I found about half-a-dozen of those travel size toothpaste tubes you get from the dentist. I decided we needed to use those quickly and declutter. There were other “giveaways”: old makeup, lotions, shampoo, toothbrushes, sugar free gums had piled up also. I could see this was an area I failed to declutter. Some items were tossed and some will be used.
During the icy, dreary days I did go through my clothes closet for winter and spring wear. Items that didn’t suit me or were not used I consigned or donated. A lot has changed during the Covid years I call them. I found I didn’t wear clothing I thought I would because we didn’t go anywhere. I found my taste for certain items had changed. I didn’t need dress shoes anymore, maybe one or two pair just in case but the rest of my footwear I had not worn and no longer suited my “Silver Sneakers” comfort style. There’s some truth in better to give than receive.
Shannon Bardwell is a writer living quietly in the Prairie. Email reaches her at [email protected].
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