More on clearing out – home office or further

Clearing out and getting rid of stuff I no longer need is one of my favourite activities, when I’m in the mood. Poor A once said, ‘If you carry on like this, in a few years you’ll only have a bed and a toothbrush!’ Which I thought was a hoot, but do you know, there is also something quite appealing about that prospect…But a few years have now gone by and I’ve still got much more than that, so maybe it’ll take a bit longer!

You might find that you start clearing your home office and get such a buzz that you want to continue in the rest of the house. Then you might find that decisions about chucking/donating/recycling become a bit more tricky.

For example, for many years I shared my life, good times and bad, with a couple of cats, who eventually died of old age. At the time I fully intended to adopt a couple more, but some major life changes intervened and I have been carting all the cat baskets, bowls etc around with me from house to house for the last twelve years! We are still not in a situation where having cats makes sense and so when I recently started banging on about more clutterclearing, A asked if I’d consider getting rid of it all.

On a logical level it made absolute sense, but emotionally it was surprisingly difficult, especially when I fished it all out of the recesses of the garage and discovered the magnetic collar my creaky tortoiseshell wore that seemed to help her arthritic old legs. Somehow giving away the physical objects associated with the cats felt like letting go of them once again, even after all this time. Not to mention feeling I was letting go of my chance to have more cats.

Fortunately I’m a sufficiently practised clutterclearer to know these feelings are only fleeting, so now all the cat accoutrements are with the local Cats Protection ladies, who will make good use of them, which is much better than being in permanent storage getting covered with dust and cobwebs.

We tend to invest things with our feelings and hang on to them, but I can now testify that the feelings are still there even when the things are not.