Place Mats

Today I got rid of 4 trash bags of stuff.  Last night I spent my time from dinner to bed time clearing up our office space.  I got rid of so much, but there is a lot left to go.  For now I am basking in the ability to walk around and open all the closet doors (I kid you not.)  When my fabric table and area is cleared up I'll take a picture.  I feel so close to that happening (now that I can get there.)

We moved from a 2160 square foot house to 1180 square foot apartment in November.  I've already mentioned we got rid of a lot of stuff, but it wasn't enough.  Many will see that as a huge down size (and they are right!  Half the space.) I wanted it though.  I knew the place we were in before was just too big.  In jettisoning the junk I've learned that I had attached all these silly rules to ownership of things that I had no idea of before I read Everything That Remains.

I had no less than 4 sets of place mats and probably 6 table runners.  But you know what?  We can't use them right now.  The children make it impossible.  We haven't been able to use them for years and it will be several more before we can again. But here I am lugging them around like they are going to save me from  cancer or something.  I saved four place mats for some unknown event where only grownups are eating at my house and all the rest went to goodwill.  A whole drawer almost empty.  What is wrong with me??

Suffice to say I am learning the lesson over and over.  It feels good.  Some of the things that went out last night made me feel so brave.  Wow- I've been holding onto that thing because I feel that I must for some reason, but I don't.  I can give it away.  I won't have to think of, clean, move, reorganize it ever again.  (I know the italics are thick, but these are revelations.  They don't come in normal font.)

In five years, when I can use a table runner or a place mat again I can make or buy them.  But now that I am not hanging onto the hope that I can use them again because they are waiting in a drawer maybe I can get on with part of living that isn't waiting for a child to grow out of a stage.  Maybe, just maybe, I can enjoy the messy, long armed, grab everything and throw it on the floor stage we are in instead.