Cleaning Up and Simplifying

I am cleaning my home office right now. At least that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I'm almost done, but I get spurts of energy and clean for a bit and then sit at my computer or read through the papers I find. I am a recovering chronic saver. I would rip pages from magazines, and save brochures. I have lot of books and other things that you never know when you just might need them. So it’s taking me a lot longer to clean.

This year I am going on a purging binge. It has a lot to do with my meditating and the act of wanting to simplify my life. Meditation clears the cobwebs of your mind. So I felt that it was about time for me to clear the cobwebs of my life too.

I cleaned out my office at work not long ago. It was way overdue for a scale back. I share a tall narrow closet of an office with someone else. Good thing we like each other. We practically sit in each other’s laps. She backs her chair up and I can’t open the drawer on the left side of my desk.

My office mate is something of a hoarder too, so we both had a lot of stuff. I got rid of so much. I was proud of myself. I had to show my closet friend at work, just so I could see her reaction. I had an empty drawer and cabinet ready for the things I had stacked on top of my file cabinet and under my desk. I had an empty desk top for the first time since I started at this company, 4 years ago!

We moved to this space 3 years ago. My office mate was on vacation, so I had to move both of our things. I never had time to find places for everything and get work done too. It didn’t help that I had brought a ton of resource materials with me, that I had collected at my last company. I left a lot of resources for the person taking over my old job too. I am guilty of keeping duplicates. So I gave myself the excuse that I had moved twice in one year.

I must admit I have only cleaned out my home office once or twice every year and then managed to quickly clutter it up again. When we moved here a decade ago, I packed up my old home and took most of the things with us. My husband was responsible for the basement, but never quite got it done. He always had an excuse. He was busy with work. He is the cleaner spouse, the Felix Unger of the relationship, so it wasn’t done because he didn’t have time. It takes him forever just to pack his luggage for a trip. So I tried to pack most of that stuff too.

Since I had very little time off of work to pack and move. I started to throw things in boxes and bring it all over. I started stashing the boxes in the closets and piling things on the floor in this room. We dubbed it my office, but it was really a spare “stuff room”. I can’t call it a junk room, because most of it wasn’t. Then with the chaos of the last year, I never got an opportunity to put things in some order again. So it just got messier.

We Americans tend to collect too much stuff. We are the ultimate consumers. I have become greener and recycle more things. I have adopted some of the yogic philosophy of scaling down possessions. So I am almost appalled at my accumulation of stuff. I was also embarrassed at the piles of things in the room. Thus I am doing the purging of said stuff.

Today I was pulling things out of the other side. I found clothes I haven’t worn in, well I don’t know how long. They will go to goodwill or the Salvation Army for someone who will use them. It feels good to be able to give them to someone who needs them more than me. It’s taking me a long time to go through a lot of it because I am discovering things I haven’t seen in years. Its almost like revisiting the past. I am of course keeping treasured memories, but this time I am able to throw away things I never could before. You know the things you think you might need someday. Often that someday never comes, or you forgot you had it.

I have never cleaned everything out of the closets here before. I have removed some things and vacuumed and dusted around things, but kept putting stuff wherever I could stick it. I had no real system or order. There is a double closet in the room, and it took 2 days to pull everything out, get rid of things and make it more efficient. I put in books, VHS tapes, DVDs and crafty stuff. It’s no longer in plies here and there waiting for something to be done with it. It looks so neat and tidy. I am keeping the door open just to admire it. I know, that’s a little strange, but you should have seen it before. It is so neat now; I just want to be able to look at it. Organization is my new project, and so far I am right on target. I really have grown up.