KEEPING IT SIMPLE

Steveston, BC

I’ve been clearing out my closets this weekend.  I ended up with a few garbage bags of clothes that I’m going to donate.  I’ve been on a rampage of sorts this weekend because I’m very determined to get my condo ready to sell this year.  It’s daunting for me to move again, because I hate it, moving is a pain in the ass – perhaps moving across the country twice has given me some sort of phobia about it.  But, my place is just too big for me.  I need to downsize.  There are many areas in my life I need to downsize.  I look around at all the stuff I have, all the things I’ve accumulated over the years and a majority of it I don’t even need.  I don’t even know why I bought it in the first place. 

I’ve been going through a lot of drama lately with my friends.  Not related to me (my own life is drama free, thank-you), mostly drama my friends are going through that I’ve needed to be there for them.  And, through it all, I’ve taken a moment to think about my own life and its direction.  I have a big goal I’m eyeing in the next two years and I’m feeling that its falling out of my grasp more and more.  Why?  Many reasons, most of which I can change, so its one of the reasons why I’m starting to get going on cleaning my condo to get it ready to sell.  The market isn’t great right now, I don’t live in a hot spot where my place will sell in a second, but I’m not giving myself a reason not to do this anymore.

My friends and I were talking about being self sufficient and living within our means.  And, living in my current place is not living within my means.  Its not that I can’t afford it, but I could save a lot more money, pay off a lot more things, have more financial freedom, if I wasn’t living in it.  Keeping it simple has always been my motto, and I’m starting to realize now that I really need to start living it again.  I may have fallen off this mantra of mine, but I’m getting back on it.

I have say though…those damn bags of clothes are freakin heavy!

THIS AND THAT

I’ve been thinking about my friend and how she’s doing. Its been on my mind.  I’ve been wanting to call her, but….well, my other friend told me to give her some space.  I keep thinking how I’d like to drop kick her husband right where it hurts if I ever saw him again.  I’m not a violent person, but the thought of causing him great pain just seems right.  I know, I know, violence will not get me anywhere.

Work has been busy lately.  I’ve been feeling very disorganized – but not because I’m disorganized (I’m not), mostly because the company is disorganized.  Many, many people have told me its not me, its the company.  I’m not stressed by it, but I need to wrap my head around how I can make it work for me.  And, I’m still new, although I’m starting to understand the whole business, slowly, but I’m getting there.  I have another business trip coming up after Labour Day weekend.  It should be fun and I’ll accumulate two more lieu days that I can use for vacation.  Business travel isn’t glamorous, but its a nice break from the daily grind of going into work.  And, I’m definitely going to pack efficiently this time. I refuse to carry around tons of stuff.

So, I’ve set myself a goal of reducing everything I own by 50%.  I finished clean sweeping the condo, it looks awesome, clutter-free.  My spare bedroom has never looked so good – the whole condo looks great.  But, I still have a bit of work ahead of me because all I did was garbage the obvious stuff, but now I need to really go through it one more time and determine what I want to donate and that includes my clothes as well.  Its a daunting task, but I plan to be done by the end of this month. I want to be able to give away half of my things.

I’m looking forward to the weekend, going to the EX, Canadian National Exhibition.  It starts today. It’ll be a family outing, so the nephews will be there.  It’ll be fun but a bit exhausting I figure.  And, I’m only working a half day today so I get to play in the afternoon, how great is that to start the weekend? 😉

TAKING ACTION

The subject title looks like I’m going to go kung fu panda on someone, but nope, I’m not.  Nothing that exciting or funny.

I started clean sweeping my spare bedroom this past weekend.  I’ve been dreading it but decided its time to take some action.  When I’m worried or upset about something, cleaning seems to help.  It takes some of the edge off of what I’m thinking about or feeling.  Music also does the same thing.  But, music wasn’t going to do it.  Anyways, I started going at it and its overwhelming the amount of shit I’ve accumulated.  Amazing.

I went out and bought a bunch of bins to organize my stuff into so that when I eventually move, and I will, it won’t be so crazy.  For a moment there, I almost threw out all the packing boxes (that were organized with stuff and cleaned out) that I stacked neatly in my den and spare bedroom without looking at them.  Honestly, I have not had to open them to look for anything in the five years I’ve lived here.  But, I figured I should take a quick look at them before chucking them.  Just in case I stuffed some kinda documents inside.

I’m not a hoarder, in fact I’m the opposite of a hoarder.  But, in the past year I’ve just been buying stuff and then throwing the bags into the spare bedroom.  So, it became this mountain of bags that I wasn’t quite sure what was in them over time.  It was crazy.  The timing was perfect for it to be done.   It was good to have the cleaning to do and try not to think too much about what’s going on with my friend.

I’m no where near finished, which is sad.  What is even sadder is that I found about 10 lip glosses that I had bought over the past year…wtf?  I don’t need lip gloss for a very long time at the rate I’m buying them.  You see, I stopped wearing lipstick this past year and then apparently went on a lip gloss buying frenzy.  Sometimes I wonder about myself.

I’ll be back at my cleaning this weekend…hopefully I’ll finish it all this weekend.  Although I have my nephews this weekend, but I should be able to fit it all in, cause I can’t take anymore of this cleaning! 😉