Simplify

My running related goals for 2011 have already been shared. But, of course, I have some non-running related goals for the year as well. The major one - to simplify. There's actually a few meanings to this, but for now, we'll concentrate on 'stuff' and I'll share the other ways I'm planning to simplify in time. The 'stuff' is how it all started...

Several weeks back, as I was attempting to clean out the dreaded 'back room' in preparation for the new treadmill, I had one of those moments where I just felt the urge to throw away everything. Stuff from years past, stuff that no longer matters, stuff from a time when I was a different person and in a different stage of my life. Stuff I attempted to sell at a yard sale that made its way back into the house and not to the dump, Goodwill or some other place like it was intended. It's a little ironic that all I want to do is get rid of stuff when I was doing it simply because I was getting new stuff, but it happens to all of us.

I was actually sitting in that room, surrounded by stuff and I yelled downstairs for my husband to come up stairs. I said..."This is just depressing. I don't want any of this. All I want is a big dumpster to make it all go away and forget about this stuff from the past". I was being a little dramatic, but it's honestly the way I felt. Half of it is from a time when I was a completely different person.

I used to be a pack-rat. I saved everything. I went away to college and left my parents house full of my stuff while I was in an itty-bitty dorm room. Then, when I finished college and got my first place, I took it all. Everything last little bit. The problem was I moved into a huge place - I was renting half of a house and I pretty much had it filled with all of my crap. Then, the day came when I moved in with hubby. He was in an itty-bitty apartment and some of my crap went back to my parents house for storage - big stuff, like a stove, a refrigerator, all my bedroom furniture, etc. At that point, I did a major purge of all the little crap I'd been saving up for years, things like old VHS movies, cassette tapes, stuffed animals, etc. It was two pick up loads. It felt so good.

Eventually, we moved out of that apartment and bought our first house and I finally got the rest of the stuff out of my parents house once again. They were ecstatic! At first, our house was bare with random mis-matched furniture and then doubles of other things, like blenders, vaccuums, etc. Then, we got married (we did things a little backwards) and had a super small DIY wedding. I still have all the crap from that too. It's all in the back room. Most of it is stuff that someone else could use but I would still have to take the time to organize it, haul it, Free-cycle it, etc. And, of course, it's just easier to put it in the back room and close the door.

Instead of doing much with it that day, the stuff basically moved from scattered throughout the room to being piled up in a bigger pile in the side of the room. There's other closets in this house that need the same treatment. So, that's one of my goals for the year - the very, very typical resolution to get rid of stuff. I'm looking to simplify. Will I go the course of so many others and abandon my resolution by the time February hits? We'll see...but at least it's public knowledge now, hopefully that will help my motivation. I actually have plans for some of it....more to come in the next few weeks. I know without an actual plan, it'll just stay right where it is.

For now, half of the room looks like the above, the other half like this (still in progress as well) . Hopefully, the whole room will look better at some point.