Spring cleaning and stuff!

Spring has sprung, in fact in Florida it feels more like summer than spring.  The time of year when spring cleaning and getting ready to enjoy the lazy, hazy days of summer is here and that means cleaning.  Not just ordinary vacuuming and dusting, but this is the time of year I like to get into all the closets and ‘lighten’ our load.  It is amazing how things just seem to accumulate, and most of them never to be worn or used.  All this stuff just makes for a messy house and makes lots of extra work deciding where to move it next.  We have decided to make a good faith effort to get rid of all that extra stuff and the timing could not be better.   Our community is hosting a community sale and we will put out all our stuff  in the hopes of getting rid of it and whatever does not go, gets picked up at the end of the day to be donated to a local charity.  With a deadline fast approaching of a few days away, I am working diligently to get through every closet, drawer and attic in the house to make sure nothing is left here that is meant to be gotten rid of.  Years ago George Carlin use to do a skit on stuff and the accumulation of it during our lifetime.  We need bigger homes, to accommodate our ‘stuff’ and pretty soon we have crammed every corner with it and must move to a bigger home to make more room for all that ‘stuff’.  The problem is this a vicious cycle of accumulate more and more until your life is ruled by needing to organize, move and deal with all that stuff.  It is a waste of money and a waste of time.  We don’t really need all of these extra things, we want them.  The difference between the two is monumental, yet most of us confuse them.  We need very little to live, but we want lots.  Pretty soon our lives are ruled by wanting more and more and identifying ourselves as our stuff rather than who we are.  cleaning out and letting go can be very therapeutic.  When my ex wanted a divorced a few years back, it was the perfect time to rid my life of all that extra stuff.  I left most things from that marriage behind and started out fresh with my things and new stuff.   This time around however, I would not be ruled by the trappings and furnishing in my house and possessions that seemed to have taken over our lives, I wanted things simpler and easier.  So every year, I spend my spring cleaning and tossing those things that we do not use or do not need.   It feels wonderful to lighten our load of material trappings, and it feels even more wonderful when we actually can walk in our walk in closets.