Hello My Imaginary Friends,
I’ve been cleaning and decluttering. We finally decided to clean out our “nests”. Nests are places you put things you don’t want to deal with. They have a nasty habit of getting bigger and bigger. They also become ridiculously intimidating to clean.
We identified 3 major nests and started work in early August. Boy, did we have a lot of crap. I mean I found empty boxes for cellphones and other electronics that would be going to high school this year if they were human. I found PS/2 port extension cables… No, those aren’t for PlayStation 2.
In a stroke of madness genius, I set a date for a yard sale and gave us 3 weeks to get everything done… We managed to clean out 2 of the 3 major nests and I’m still terrified of the garage…
We’re really close to maybe having a functional guest room instead of a third bedroom garbage pile, so that’s really good.
If this mad cleaning has taught me anything, it’s that minimalism is overrated. The sense of cleanliness and peace doesn’t come from getting rid of everything, it comes from optimizing your living space. If you’re not comfortable in the way your living area is organized, you need to do something about it and the best thing is to get rid of stuff you’re unhappy with and keep the good stuff.
That doesn’t mean that you have to live like a divorced man on TV or some new age guru in a magazine. It just means you need to be happy with the flow and movement in your living space. Everyone has different tastes.
I personally love having lots of oversized cushy furniture and books in every room.
The important thing is to periodically do cleaning and organizing of your nests. The organizing part is extra important to avoid the same nest developing again.
Later Days,
Éric