It’s been a week since my last Project Cleanup post. The silence isn’t because I haven’t been spending a fair chunk of each day continuing to sort through my goods; it’s because I’ve reached that tedious stage between the initial excitement of getting into the task and the point where I can start doing substantial things like repainting or digitising or buying new furniture.
And there’s been a lot of waiting. I waited in most of one day last week waiting for an insurance claims processor and an electrician. I’m going to have to wait in again next week for a quote on replacing the flooring. At least the electrician fixed my broadband (water had totally flooded the phone line), so I’ll have something to occupy me while I wait when shoving stuff in boxes gets too tedious. And my house is much more functional: the only room I haven’t been through to repack stuff is the study.
I don’t have any great wisdom to share about this stage of proceedings, other than to note that it’s pretty much inevitable with any big renovation or clutter-busting project. Not assuming you can get it all done in a day is pretty important.
I reckon I did my last ever final cleanup/declutter last year. Things from childhood etc were tossed even. If I had any philosophy about the process it was, don’t keep stuff for other people !
So many things I’d kept just to show off I guess… display. Maybe someone would borrow ‘IT’… That was confronting to realise that I had justified storage of junk with a secret sort of ‘vanity’ I’d developed, over the years.
So, when it’s said that a good clean out can be cathartic, I found out the hard way – it was life changing… since then even my purchasing habits were influenced by the whole process of a thorough clean out.