Last month I wrote about change bringing on chaos. And, here
I am, making another change with its own form of chaos. This time
I needed to let go of stuff. I like stuff. It gives me comfort
to look at it…to know I have it…and have had it for ever so long.
In the 1980s, my kids and I were living in an old farmhouse when I
started getting the “message” that I was going to be traveling light. It was
this feeling, over and over again, that I had to get rid of a lot of my stuff, because I would be
traveling light. At that point I didn’t know if it was Light (Illumination) or
light (unburdened).
I had a tag sale. Put lots of stuff out on the lawn and
traumatized my kids. They thought I was terminally ill, and was not telling
them. I mean, I never got rid of stuff, so if that’s what I was doing, I must
have been sick. Once I reassured them I was fine, but following a feeling I
had, we all had a good laugh. This just illustrates the fact that I don’t get
rid of stuff easily or readily.
The laughing stopped when I got the notice that my lease would not
be renewed. The owner figured he could get my amount of rent (for the whole
house) per room if he made it into a rooming house. Of the four kids only one
was still living at home.
Twenty some odd years later, when I was getting ready to move from
a house into a condo, I was having anxiety attacks (really) over what to keep
and what to get rid of…in just one storage closet. My oldest daughter had to
help me sort things out. She had no attachment to any of the stuff and was able to help
me decide: keep, donate, toss.
And, now we come to yesterday. I do know what came over me. I’ve
been doing a lot of internal work on anger I didn’t realize I was holding on
to, so I’ve been getting rid of a lot of emotional issues. I guess the next
step was to rid myself of material stuff.
When the inner starts feeling cluttered, look to the outer.
I went through my bedroom closets, where I had already stacked a
lot of things destined to be donated…like they had been stacked there for a
couple years. One shelf of one closet was piled high with bedding items I no
longer needed/wanted. Then I went through the bureau drawers in the spare room.
There were tons of old sheets and pillow cases. I filled one plastic bag with
clothing and another with bedding. There was also a comforter set (stuffed back
into its original plastic carrying bag) I had bought and decided I didn’t like after one
season.
Just look at my closets now! And the bureau drawers!
While I was in the midst of doing this, my hips started to ache,
especially my right hip, which really hurt. I figured out what was going on, so
I talked to my right hip. I explained that the clothes no longer fit or were
out of style, and the bedding was no longer needed and that all this stuff would go to people
who really needed it. The hips stopped aching.
This morning I took everything to a charity in town that hires
developmentally handicapped people (not that I could tell). They helped me
unload my car and gave me a receipt.
I feel so much Lighter and lighter.
