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This move that looms in my spring future, has motivated me to purge, purge, purge. I’ve been ever so good about decluttering over the years. Ask the cats. Every time I bring out the garbage bags, they gather all their favourite nip toys and hide them in places they think I won’t discover. Actually, I think what they’re really worried about is that I might just get carried overboard and scoop them up along with that rug that hasn’t been used in 23 years.
It’s amazing how much stuff you hold onto when you have the room to keep it. This place has lots of hiding places where I wouldn’t even have to consider getting rid of things because I could just pretend that it didn’t exist. Sure, I got rid of the obvious things but it’s all that un-obvious stuff that hangs around hiding in corners and in the back of closets.
I filled a bundle of garbage bags this week that now sit on the porch waiting until Thanksgiving comes
The beginning of my pile
and goes and the folks come and pick it all up on Tuesday. With every bag I carried down two flights of stairs, a new lightness entered my heart. I’m very proud of my efforts and have bragged about it to everyone who comes to see me. I have more to add but may just wait until the next time they come to pick things up. I already don’t miss a thing that’s out there on that porch just like I’ve never missed any of the other stuff I’ve given or thrown away.
Why do we keep so much stuff around us? Do we think that we’ll lose our younger selves and those memories of where we’ve been and who we were and all the places and people we loved over our lifetimes? I remember the years I spent in Europe when I didn’t own a camera and when the internet was still unknown — at least to me. Any memories I gathered were done just by placing each of their lights and sounds and feelings into my memory. Sure, those memories might get a tad distorted over the years, but so what. I didn’t need to have hundreds of pictures or things collected to let me remember those years.
You would have thought that after all of my big, decluttering moves in my life — the fire in Montreal where I lost everything, those three-months stays in Europe where nothing could be accumulated because you just couldn’t carry it, moving up here where I had to leave people and treasures from my DC days and then selling the house in Benidoleig and visiting one last time to bring back a few bits from the 30 plus years that I owned that house — that I would never have accumulated enough to ever have that pile that’s sitting on the porch. But I guess it’s just my nesting nature. I’m promising myself that I’ll take a lot less than I moved in here with and enjoy the breath and light that that feeling gives me. Not to worry, the cats will definitely make the cut.
Annie's Odyssey 
Awesome and Happy Thanksgiving
And a Happy Thanksgiving right back at you.