I can’t believe we’re in June already!
There’s not a lot to report around here. Friday the munchkin and I had a day out to the zoo with Nana which was very tiring for us all. He’s very much all about animals lately and wanting to pet everything – the dog, the neighbor’s sweet cat Callie (I need to get a picture of her, she’s seriously the prettiest), the wild bunnies in my parents’ yard when I drop him off in the mornings while I go to work, the the goats at the Zoo’s petting area… if it’s furry and moves, he wants to touch it.
The husband and I took some time Saturday to clean off the back patio and try to finish more of the garden. All the straw we lay down as mulch gets blown up onto our patio, making such a horrible mess. I’m not sure what a better option is – wood mulch is significantly pricier and lasts just about as long. Perhaps I’ll forever be sweeping straw off the patio? Anyway, it feels really great to have it cleaned off and now I can go back to using it in the evenings to knit, watch the birds, and have a beer. It’s something I’ve really missed this spring. Our clematis didn’t make it through the winter, along with several of our other flowers, so it’s not quite so cozy, but it’s home.
I downloaded Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things from my library’s online system and have been reading it every chance I get. I hate e-books, and very much prefer the real thing, but my local library didn’t have it available and I didn’t want to buy a book and bring something else into the house. It’s fascinating, mostly in that I can see a lot of myself in some of these chapters. I’m not nearly (ok, the husband would say not even close) to the level of hoarder, but I have a lot of tendencies to hold onto things longer than I need to and sometimes I find it impossible to part with things if there’s sentimental value. It’s interesting to see the feelings expressed by some of these people reflected in my own life. And it certainly has me thinking hard about my attachment to certain things and why I can’t seem to get rid of them. It has really helped me with learning to recognize why I’m holding onto something and then give myself enough of a push to just let it go.
I’ve been trying to keep track of my numbers of things I’ve removed (or have put in a pile to remove) from the house, and right now I’m over 100. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up my 5 things posts horribly long when I’ve got this kind of motivation to purge all at once. Though, to be fair, right now I’m getting rid of the “easy” stuff – the stuff that I’ve held onto for too long, the stuff I’ve decided I won’t use and – if I do need it later – I can re-buy. Once I get this initial clear-out done, though, it’ll be much harder and that’s when a whole lot more of the soul-searching comes in.
