Always overwhelmed by stuff.

[gottawonder]

This evening I decided to tidy up a bit, as the rooms I spend the most time in hadn't been picked up in a while. As in, as I brought things into the house they just got set on the dining room table or set on the floor.

I picked up things, put books on the shelf, put a bunch of stuff in recycling, a few things in the trash, a few things into a pile to be mended, something else into the washing machine, and finally took down the Christmas tree (it was in the corner, and I literally had stopped noticing that it was still there).

I took the tree upstairs, and the decorations, but it just makes me sad about the upstairs. Two pretty little bedrooms that so cluttered right now. One room is all clothes and shoes, kind of my wardrobe room. It's not "full" full, but there's a lot in there. A lot of those clothes don't fit now, and I would like to be brave enough and confident enough in my weight loss to pass them on.

The other room is mostly my craft stuff, and it's in a terrible state because it's all in boxes, and not in shelves where I can see it and use it. Some of my craft stuff is still in storage, but I can't really even bring it into the house right now. I won't be able to do anything permanent with the craft room to organize it, because the addition we're building will affect that room. I may even have to move everything out of there before I'm done.

I often feel kind of sad and overwhelmed by my stuff. There's too much of it! I still have functioning rooms, and so on, but the fact that we do have a lot of things in storage right now, and so much is unsettled with the house, make it a little hard to organize and to make decisions about the permanent locations for things.

I can't even really hang up all my nice pictures because I have to patch and sand the walls, and repaint. The whole house. I can't start on that yet, because there's no point until the addition is finished and we change the current little bedroom into our bathroom. We'll be making holes and doorways and this summer we're hopefully replacing windows. I have to be content with living in this very semi-permanent state.

This makes the stuff seem worse, because I can't really put anything away.

I also still bring new things home. The odd tube of watercolor paint isn't so bad, and I kind of need new clothes now, but I also need to get rid of old things.

What I need to stop buying is decorative things like cool bowls and knick knacks. I don't buy a lot of those things, but I don't need ANY. I've been doing better for not bringing home that kind of thing, but for awhile I was buying that kind of stuff, probably because I wanted to decorate the new house. Sigh.

I know that buying things is because I have an unmet need somewhere. Sometimes it's boredom, sometimes it's because I enjoy the process of "hunting", sometimes it's loneliness, or a lack of purpose. I also just love the process of walking into a thrift store, thinking that I might find something truly amazing today. I often do. Some of my favorite things have come from a thrift store, or Winner's (which feels like a thrift store to me).