Changing My Spots?

Well, I certainly hope so...at least a little bit. Tho' I'll always love leopard! *wink*

Sandra recommended the Miss Minimalist blog in my contest a week or so ago, and I've spent quite a bit of time poking around on her site. Then, after finally buying my Nook last weekend, I downloaded her book, The Joy of Less and have been reading and thinking (I'm not one who just plows thru these types of essays, I savor, and consider, and think about what's worked before and what hasn't.

And in thinking about her steps to take towards minimalism ... towards paring down, sweeping out the clutter and such, I had to factor in the hard commitment I have to two shows in September. My personal decluttering/mind reversal/spot-changing will have to take place around that deadline.

So this weekend, I made some progress:
That is a huge stack of knitting patterns that have been purchased or were offered free online. I had printed everything, some were in plastic sleeves, some were duplicates, and some were just ... well, just there. Now, everything has been gone thru, put into a logical sequence (I didn't have dividers, but that's on the shopping list), and slipped into page protectors...this was a job that confronted me every single time I walked into the knitting room/office, one I just couldn't face. It took about 35-40 minutes total. What was I waiting for?

Then I did this:

Saturday was our second Prescription Drug Take-Back event. I couldn't go last time, but a friend took the few odds and ends I had at the time...still I knew there were more - meds I'd been prescribed and ended up either being unable to take for my own sensitivities, or co-mix issues with other meds I take, or samples that didn't work, and sometimes just a regular drug I'd been taking and suddenly the doc thinks there's something better - you know how this goes, right? Well...the police, in conjunction with the DEA, have these opportunities to bring the drugs in, no questions asked, and you hand them off for proper disposal - not flushing them down the drain or tossing them into the landfill where they contaminate the environment...

I knew I had things in the back of that cabinet that I could drop off at this Take-Back, and I also knew there was a lot of stuff in that overstuffed cabinet that could be pitched. Friday night, I got down in the floor and tossed, left and right - you should have seen the personal care products, toiletries, cosmetics and such that aren't there anymore...(I'm notorious, if I spend money for something, I hang onto it until I either pitch it in sheer disgust (like now) or I use it up...sometimes that's not such a good thing!

And can you tell there's lots of SPACE behind the things at the very front of this cabinet.

Space. Room to breathe...
That's a nice feeling...