By Beauty Damned

Clean House

What a beautiful Sunday...

As usual, my backpain served as my alarm clock this morning, but so far that is the most unpleasant thing that I intend to have happen today.

I wandered into my living room and felt a rush of happiness at the still new sight of a house that is orderly and composed of furniture and feng shui that doesn't make me want to commit hari kari. I know that's dramatic and harsh, but you really have to know how I used to feel about my living room when I got up and walked into it. I despise chaos, and that was as close to clutter and chaos as I've ever allowed myself to live in. I was constantly preoccupied by all of the things I wanted to do to it and all the deep organization that needed to be done, which somehow rendered me unproductive on so many levels. The feng shui was killing me and it was killing my creativity.

Since my boyfriend moved in with me after more than four years of dating, my house exploded with his things and my things, and nothing seemed to have a place anymore - actually, it's always been that way, it just got worse. There didn't seem to be any real sense of comfort in our surroundings, and as a slightly anal retentive Virgo it drove me absolutely nuts thinking about the randomness of it all.

Not anymore. I have purged my home of an unbelievable amount of unneeded junk, reorganized closets and made more room for Rob and his things. Yesterday I built a bookcase one piece at a time and cleaned my floors with the intensity of a serious workout. I worked all day until finally collapsing onto my sofa at midnight with a glass of wine. As I lifted the glass to my lips, I glanced into the mirror and saw that I had built up some impressive muscle tone in my arms, which only added to the sense of extreme satisfaction coursing through my veins. This has taken place over the the past two weeks, during which I have exerted a great deal of physical energy around the house. There is still lots to be done, but I feel like I have climbed a steep incline to reach this current point of near contentment. That is, before the next one comes into view...

There is nothing like cleansing your life of unneeded junk, whether it is physical or emotional.

Years ago, when Darcie's VW bus burned to a heap on I-5 when we were but wee teenagers, I was forced to let go of so many things that held value to me, as they transformed into nothing more than a cloud of black smoke against the newborn sky. Since then I've become better at getting rid of things in some ways, and worse in others. I've learned that everything, EVERYTHING, is impermanent. We come into this life with this body and that is what we leave it with. So I've gotten really good at getting rid of clothes. Hahaa!

On the other hand, I've become more of a pakrat about paper than ever before. If I scribble a thought on a piece of paper, or receive a note on the fridge from Rob, I save it. Terrible habit. I also save anything and everything that I think I might use in an art project; cardboard, fabric, tissue paper...even junkie pieces of furniture that I might paint or collage. On top of all that, I don't know how it is that a house becomes so completely overrun by small items that seem to have no particular category and don't seem to be in any state of use, yet I still cannot fathom throwing them out. There are more chargers and adapters in this house than I can think of appliances that they might go to. But I know the moment I get rid of one, I will find out what it goes to. So I must have a place where adapters and chargers are kept. This is a hazard of the technological era people. Every time I turn around I find a wireless headset or a cable of some kind. Then there are the buttons. Ai carumba, the buttons. It seems like an extra button comes with every piece of clothing purchased. Next thing you know, they'll be enclosing new soles with every pair of shoes and a new backside for every pair of underpants and you'll have to find a place to put those things too.

Luckily, if there is one thing that I've learned from all of the home makeover shows I've watched, it is that with the right organizational accoutrements, you can create a place for everything. So that has been my goal of late: to create a place for everything and to get rid of that which no longer has a place in my life at all. It's so easy to just allow shit to accumulate in our lives at a rate that makes it difficult to manage. Especially here in America, we are a society that never slows down its consumption. The influx of junkmail, techie devices, books, cds, dvds, clothes, lip glosses, fortune cookies/duck sauce from Chinese takeout, and BUTTONS, is insane. We must take control of the clutter! I have recently acquired the phone number for a local church that will soon be coming to cart away items that I no longer use such as blankets, coats, shoes and clothing...there's no better time to clean out the closet than when the weather is warm and you're in a giving mood.

Posted by Maria at May 28, 2006 02:52 PM | TrackBack