They Say New Year’s is a time for resolutions. And Monday is supposed to be my fitness update. Both of which might get some mention today. Both of which, from the Fitness perspective, will get more detail next Monday.
But today, I’m going to talk about New Year’s as a time for cleaning.
There are more posts coming this month detailing the house remodel/recover from our tree/storm damage. But without the pictures and the step-by-step chronology of those, today’s post reflects a major side-effect of that process. We are moving houses — but within the same house.
Which involves a lot of cleaning, and getting rid of stuff that has accumulated throughout the years.
We have a 2,000 square foot house, and were probably actively living in 1,200 to 1,500 feet of. When we get done we will have rearranged our patterns and be living in 1,500 to 1,800 square feet of our 2,000 square feet. And the remaining 200 to 500 square feet will be within our sites with ideas for how to utilize them as well.
A couple years ago I did a reorganization of our kitchen. It is interesting how patterns change over the years, and we had so many things not being used just cluttering up space. So we cleaned a lot of stuff up and started utilizing more of what we had.
The same thing happened to the house in general. We had spaces we stopped using, and items began piling up in them. Now we are decluttering and reorganizing the spaces for more use and less clutter.
It is interesting in our culture how much stuff we tend to accumulate. We are in a culture of affluence. Even the poorest ends up overflowing in the detritus of the stuff that forms our affluence. This is a good thing, our affluence, as long as we are aware of the detritus that is its side effect and cycle it back into the process of affluence and living.
That isn’t a carte blanche statement for recycling, as much as that seems on the surface. But it points to the side effects of our affluence, and the opportunities it provides us. We need to keep learning and growing, and recreating our way of living to use and clear and reuse what is available to us. Nothing is ever waste, everything is always potential for the new and better.
At The Rainbow 