1 Year to an Organized Life July Week Two

This week you can:

• get a handle on all forms of memorabilia
• understand when enough is enough
• explore ways to honor the past without being mired in it

This is a pic of what is hanging on my Fridge right now.  I thought it would be a good one for this week because anytime something "makes" the Fridge, in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "so how long do I need to keep this?"

This is an area that I used to struggle in, and if I'm honest I still do occasionally.  But I have gotten a lot better.  Probably the turning point for me was having boxes and bags of stuff and having to spend hours going through it to decide what to keep, and I couldn't remember what a bunch of it was!!

There is some journaling to do for this week to make you ask and answer the questions we need to face, such as why am I keeping this?!  Hopefully it is NOT because you are stuck in the past.  Do you need that stuff from high school or does it just remind you of great times.  Do you need the box of stuff to remind you of the great times or can you remember them without it?

Here's a tough question, but one that might help....if you were not here any longer, what would people do with all this stuff you have left behind?  Every time I remind myself of that, I want to purge my house again!

Collections: it might be time to rethink them!  I used to collect clocks, especially small ones that sat on shelves and tables.  There were quite a few reasons why I quit collecting them, such as: I was sick of dusting all of them, I was spending a lot in batteries to keep them all going, everyone knew I collected clocks so almost every gift I got was a clock and I would have liked a nice sweater once in a  while!  It was mostly the dust and space thing that had me stop collecting.  I didn't want my home to be cluttered and overwhelming to me or my guests, and let's face it, a lot of collections end up looking pretty cluttered.  BTW, I made quite a bit at the yard sale when I finally decided to let most of them go!

Regina offers great advice, as usual, on how to get started on pages 182 and 183; you've got to read it!  I'm glad she mentions taking a photo, because that was going to be my suggestion.  A scrapbook filled with pictures of each one of those clocks, and then a journaling card next to each one explaining why it was so great takes up a ton less space than all of the clocks, plus no dusting and no batteries.  I could still look at them whenever I wanted!  Not to mention money I'm saving by not buying every cute clock I see!

So the pic on the Fridge?  Yes, I'm going to take it down right now.  The little girl that painted it for me doesn't even remember it.  And I can see her every week!

Until Next Time.....

Franny