Don't Hold Still

I'm on a rampage. These fits overtake me and there's simply no resisting -or predicting- them. I want to clean house. I want to throw out things we don't use anymore, never needed in the first place, or that have been waiting 12 years on the "to be fixed" pile. When the kids were little, they would say about these moods, "Don't hold still. She'll think you're garbage and take YOU to the Goodwill."

There's no question that, in terms of social justice, it would have been better if we had never purchased many of these things in the first place. But some things were valuable -to us, anyway- and aren't anymore. The book situation has gotten completely out of control. I find myself very willing to get rid of many of the books I had in college, which before were sacred cows of the highest order. And the classics, we'll keep. But the books in my field? Really, scholarship has moved along; let's let these things go.

Just last night, I went through the cookbooks and got rid of TWO garbage bags full of cookbooks I won't even miss. (I think.) Interesting little conversation between the long-suffering spouse and me:

I'm talking to the back of his head, while he's puttering on the computer and I'm purging cookbooks. I say,

"I'm being pretty conservative here." -meaning that I'm being cautious about throwing things out, but he only hears the words a propos of nothing as far as he can tell.

He responds,

"Who are you and what have you done with my wife?"

Anyway, there's apparently some feng shui thing about giving up things in multiples of 27 frees up energy in some positive way. At this point I think I could find 2700 things, and just unleash a hailstorm or something. But here's what I know. Stuff doesn't nurture -except in the rarest of situations. Great grandma's scrap quilt.... that kind of thing. Shopping doesn't soothe the soul, even though I think it will sometimes.

I want a welcoming, home-y space that is full of things that either have meaning or are useful. If something isn't at least one of those, out it goes. Now if I could just get to the point where I ask those questions before I buy something, we'd have made some progress on the social justice front.

Tags: social justice