You’re making progress. It may not seem like it yet but when you reach the later stages, you’ll thank yourself. After a second pass through the main bookshelves, you create new towers of paperback manuals – for parenting, teaching, coaching, meditating, communicating, understanding the world. These too will not really be missed. Still it’s an idea you struggle with, at least briefly. By now you have sharpened your book-to-box spatial ratio awareness. It’s actually amazing how differently books occupy a space based on how they’re positioned. Once they’re packed up so efficiently, it would be a shame not to see them off to the second-hand vendor.
You pat yourself on the back. You can do this.
You walk into other rooms: the son’s, your own bedroom, the back room, the kitchen. It dawns on you: there are books everywhere! In and on your nightstand, on top of the son’s dresser and in the corner behind his bed, on that extra odd sized chair in the kitchen, not to speak of the shelves in the back room. You have built a life with books. It’s that simple. Forgive yourself. Count your blessings and keep weeding. Not every book ever acquired must remain in your care and possession. Move on to other areas.
The bathroom. Take it one drawer at a time, start from the bottom and work your way up. Unused bath mats, old sponges, odd containers that never came into use. All of that into the bag. You’re warmed up, the rest will go quickly. All those ridiculous gift soaps and scrubs, bath oils and nail polishes – once or never opened – dump them! The candle you lit one winter night when your pre-schooler was finally in bed and you dared to draw yourself a hot bath and play an old Tony Braxton CD. Well, after collecting dust these past 8 years you can finally remove it from from the forest of tall standing packages of creams, shampoos and lotions. Surprisingly heavy when you pick it up, this Yankee candle – all it did for these many years was take up space. Pitch it and you immediately become lighter.
Why hold onto old toothbrushes, baby hair brushes, nail files and razors? Astounding how effortlessly these details collect and hide their existence. There’s little negotiation needed here. So much is expired, perhaps even hazardous by now. It costs you next to nothing to add their collective weight to the bag and claim the Bathroom temporarily conquered. Lift the bag, grab your shoes, dispose of today’s booty of miscellany with joy.
The bathroom was an easy target after all – low hanging fruit, as they say. You know what? You’ll take it. Book the win and keep it moving.
edifiedlistener 