Just Do It

Maybe it was the trip to the Nike store yesterday, but when I realized I hadn't yet chucked and blogged today, my solution was, "Just do it."

No, not immediately.  If I were that good, I would never have gotten myself into this mess. 

First, I panicked.  It went something like this:

• Oh, no!  I'll never get to bed!
• I'll be up all night because I told my family I would get this pile of junk out of the dining room tonight.
• I've failed.
• Wait, I only have to get rid of one thing.
• That thing could be a piece of paper.  Surely, I can find a piece of paper to get rid of.
• That's dumb.  I can't blog that.  I recycle paper every day.
• OK, I'll just clean up this pile of children's books.
• Darn.  Half of them are French so I can't let go of them yet, and half of them are English so they are going to my nephews.  It doesn't really count if I can only get them as far as the front hall closet to await my next trip to see them.
• The front hall closet!  It's full of stuff I've been trying to find homes for!  All I have to do is pick one thing, decide where it's going, and PUT IT IN MY CAR so it has a reasonable chance of getting there!

That's when I finally got to, just do it.  Just get rid of one thing.  Doing turned into more doing and I recorded several items on itsdeductible.com to drop off tomorrow.  They didn't get to my car, but they are at the front door. 

Every one of those items is something I already decided some time ago to get rid of, and didn't.  Why?  Because I seem to want all of my things to have a "soft landing."  I feel like it needs to go to a good home, or I need to get money for it, or something purposeful.  I don't want to put myself down here-- it is absolutely my intention to love myself through this-- but seriously?!  I'm not putting babies up for adoption. 

Speaking of babies, one of the items that is FINALLY leaving the house is a diaper bag.  My "babies" are starting the 4th and 7th grades!  I feel like I just smacked myself upside the head for holding on to that so long.  Wait, my feelings are hurt.  Now I have to hug me a few times and tell me I was just teasing.

Setting My Intention

There is something about declaring my intention publicly that makes me *think* I will be more likely to follow through.  I don't know if that's true.  I started what I meant to be my main blog over a year ago, but I sure haven't done much with it.  I think that is because it is an absolutely authentic reflection of where I am in my journey; it doesn't just display where I want to be.

It is, though, kind of like buying a gym membership to make myself exercise.  I am starting a blog of the things I fling (declutter) in order to make myself do it.  That's only part of the reason: I also want to tell me story.  Yesterday I tried to get rid of a whole bunch of books, including children's books in French, and I got so bogged down in my feelings about:

• leaving the classroom a few years ago (I taught French)
• dropping the ball on raising my kids bilingual (the eldest was bilingual until he was 3, then English shot ahead, and I got tired)
• the very little attention French gets from me anymore (or the very little French attention I give myself?)
• millions of teaching ideas that pop up as I look at the pages but I don't know when to create them, since I've got a day job that I like (that does not involve French)

In other words:

• fear of failure
• perfectionism
• guilt
• scarcity mentality
• and so on

If your first thought is "Get over it and get rid of your clutter," you may want to go on to another blog.  Unless, of course, your second thought is "I want to examine why I am judging this woman for her attachment to objects," or perhaps, "This could be fascinating, like Hoarders."  I have never watched Hoarders, by the way, because I am afraid I will relate too much to the people on it.  I admit it might make me feel better, in an "at least I'm not that bad" sort of way, but I just don't want to go there.

The blog gets its name from an evening in 2003 when my husband had moved already, and I was getting ready to move right behind him, with the three-year-old and the newborn.  The movers were coming the next day and I was not done packing.  I was sleep-deprived, had postpartum depression and anxiety, and found myself completely unable to make decisions.  I asked a friend (my son's daycare provider at the time) to help me, and for hours she stayed with me and held up objects, saying for each one, "Keep it or chuck it?"  I would try to reason whether I needed/wanted/loved it, or I would tell its story, and she would gently interrupt me and say, "Keep or chuck?"  It was painful, but the persistence is what I needed (and why I broke down and called her in the first place).



I usually use the FlyLady term "fling" when I'm getting rid of things.  FlyLady's question is, "Does it bless this house?"  When I am helping my kids clean up, I say, "Keep or fling?"  But something about the urgency of my current flinging decisions (one, to fling freely, and two, to do so in a blog) brings me back to the immediacy of my decision-making that night.  Keep or chuck.  "Chuck" has a sense of power and finality.

That said, even my helper of that night, Michelle (of ReMiks Jewelry), might agree that this wouldn't be much of a blog if each entry had only a list of items marked "kept" or "chucked."  My intention is to fling at least one item every day, and tell the story that needs telling.