Cut it out

My mind's on overdrive lately (damn vitamins! :-) hmmm.... didn't check if they're compatible with Bioplus...). This morning I woke up thinking, figuring stuff out, with the brain going full-speed. And one conclusion I came to is that this is the perfect time to start afresh on some home contents.

A lot of our furnishings have been:
a) "recycled" from road-side throw-aways
b) accumulated cheaply from those leaving the country
c) inherited from the parents
d) around too long

Our new place doesn't have a garage to dump things in, so it's the perfect time to not only pare down what we have, but replace a lot of things with better things.

A year or so back I started to practice living with "open hands" - not getting attached to my stuff, or bound by clutter and sentimental junk. I wanted to be able to let it all go if I had to - to pack up Olivia with mere essentials and disappear, or to cleanse my space completely in an effort to live more simply. I viciously attacked the contents of my garage, joined up with my local freecycle group and got rid of tons of stuff. An entire car-load of old clothes went within half an hour, and a good deal more disappeared in intervals thereafter. Leaving me enough space to stick the vehicle in the garage for the first time ever. Unfortunately it soon filled up again - mostly with rescued wood I wanted to do stuff with. Half an Australian blackwood too, which I donated on Wednesday to a guy that does woodwork and who will repay me with some turned items from my wood later. The rest I may hold a braai with! :-) But there's some sentimental stuff there too - Jason's school goodies through Primary School, diaries of mine from years ago etc. Some will stay (diaries), a lot will go (old notebooks). Other stuff may be re-organized (photos) or put out as "free to a good home" (house leftovers I don't feel like selling, but which are still useful).

I'm going to be sweeping through our goodies like one possessed - cutting out things I don't plan to cart around.

There's furniture going too. Quite a bit of it. My piano, the beds, the fridge and freezer, the desks, some bookshelves - those stay. The rest goes, to be replaced by goodies I've been wanting to acquire for ages, things that are more my taste and style, which I'll be happy to come home to. This is going to be a very busy week!

In the meantime the lease application has been signed and submitted, to be processed on Monday. We should be good to go by next weekend. Settled in quickly if I can help it.

Now however it's cutting out time. The garbage guys are going to have a lot of stuff to cart away on Monday!