Spring Cleaning Chaos

Since my last post everything has been in an uproar. I packed up and moved out of my apartment, back into my house in Waterloo. I went to the awards show for Media Arts (my program) and had one of the best nights of my now-over college career. I said one temporary goodbye to lots of amazing friends. I've been applying for jobs, and I have been going to the gym! (Just ask my sore EVERYTHING.)

I also got the chance to go to Steve's (my sister's boyfriend) tattoo appointment. I intend to post about it ASAP! The funny thing is, I have loads of material, but no time or energy to write about it! I guess I'll just have to sneak another cup of coffee into my schedule... Who needs sleep, right?

One of the things that has been completely consuming my time is DE-CLUTTERING. My mama loves to give little presents, sometimes just for no reason at all. It's very sweet, but... It is in this way, that I have accumulated gadgets and gizmos aplenty. The sheer amount of stuff I have only came to my attention as I was moving. At one point I stood with my roommate in the middle of our kitchen, stranded in a sea of half packed boxes and plastics bag and cried out in despair: "We'll never make it out alive!" (Note: we did. Thanks to her.)

Really, I feel a bit like a hoarder... And I also feel the way I'm living does not reflect my inner philosophies. I want a clean room and a clean mind and a clean slate. So I've been tidying and purging.

If you ever find yourself in the same boat as me I can offer a few words of advice:
YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO THROW THINGS OUT. Be prepared for this. Get garbage bags: one for stuff you and nobody can use. One for stuff someone else might need/want. Donate it. Pawn it off on your siblings. Throw a garage sale-- just get rid of it!

YOU SHOULD ENLIST HELP. Trust me, if you've collected stuff over the years, the hardest thing to do is get rid of it. You've held onto it for a reason, emotional, impractical, whatever. Enlist a friend, a sibling, or even a dog to give you a skeptical look whenever you clutch your 6th teddy bear, look into it's eyes and you think about keeping it.

HAVE A BREAK. No, I'm not being paid off by Kit Kat to say that. Organizing and cleaning and purging is grueling and time consuming. This blog took me two days to write because I started it while I was on a cleaning break, and I've been polishing and scribbling it here and there between cleaning, eating, and going to the gym. It's not easy. So take breaks to preserve your sanity and get some fresh air.

BIN THERE, DONE THAT. If there's something you're not using now, but you know you'll want to keep it in the future, box it up and put it into storage or something! You don't have to get rid of EVERYTHING but you want to be sure it will be useful or meaningful to you in the future.

And with that, I'm back to cleaning. Later Days!