Well, there goes my peace for the morning. D is up and moving about and teasing the cat with her catnip mouse. At least, at least I had one quiet hour to myself.
As much as D and I are alike, we have one basic difference and it’s all about how we start our weekend days. I’ve spoken before about my need for a quiet, contemplative start to each day. Whether it involves a cup of coffee on the balcony or browsing the internet and catching up on blog posts made while I was sleeping, it doesn’t matter. It has to be quiet. No television. No talking. No interruptions. On the other hand, D emerges from the bedroom wide awake and ready to take on the day (unless, of course, it’s a weekday and then he’s bleary eyed and sleepy until he gets to work, which is worse, really). The television is turned on. The cat engaged in “conversation”. And then he turns his attention to me. Can you make me breakfast? What do you want to do today? Should we give the cat some grass? Where did you put my coffee? Do you have any change for the paper. And on. And on. And on.
At some point in the future we’ll figure out how to accommodate each other in the morning. Until then, however, I’ll try to keep my irritation with the early morning interruptions to myself and try to ignore the excessive noise and demands. By midday we’ll have caught up with each other and be ready to face the rest of the day.
Which, today, might involve some grocery shopping (I wish we could wait until nearly midnight to do it, like we did last weekend — we were in and out of the supermarket in under half an hour. Such a revelation. The lack of crowds and trolleys. The short queues. Bliss.) and some laundry. Maybe there will be some knitting, too, as I’m coming up to the end of the second of my first attempt at a pair of socks. And maybe there will be some more uncluttering, even though the sheer volume of stuff we have to unclutter has sent me into procrastination mood.
I need another small task, like the one I tackled yesterday: my bedside table.
My drawer hasn’t been completely cleared of clutter but at least the hundreds of spare buttons, receipts and mementos of events long forgotten, spare sunglasses that I’ll never wear again, business cards and general crap have been binned (or shredded as the case may require). I still haven’t decided what to do with the four spiral bound notebooks, all of which have some dire journalling adorning their pages, or with the jewellery that I never wear.
The jewellery is going to be the hardest to deal with. I don’t wear a lot of jewellery. Ever. Just my wedding and engagement rings and a claddagh. That’s it. So just how I have accumulated so many pieces — particularly earrings — is a mystery. My grandmother gave me some of it — those are the pieces that will be kept and cherished for as long as I am able, as a reminder of the woman she was — and D has given me some of the rest. I think he thought he could turn me into a girly-girl but he’s realised now that will never happen. He still lives in hope, based on the necklaces, bracelets and rings that he has bought me. And given the thought and time that went into choosing pieces that I might wear, I can’t bring myself to part with any of it.
Actually, I can’t bring myself to part with most of the things left in the drawer, even the Tweety-Bird Pez dispenser which has never been used and for which gift there was no real reason. I’m a hoarder — always have been, hopefully won’t always be — and my hoarding tendencies tend to show strongest when there is sentiment and memory attached to the something I’m hoarding. Which is why I have drawers and boxes full of Stuff. Which I never look at until the urge to unclutter hits me. Or we move.
So, yes, I have more work to do on my bedside drawer. The only things that should be kept in there are those that I will use, frequently. At this moment, nothing in that drawer is used, let alone frequently used.
But it’s a start.
And it means that I can put off the big battle, the spare room, until another day.
Decluttering is so, so hard. We have moved into progressively smaller homes over the last 10 years, and at each move we have shed stuff. I had to be particularly ferocious and heartless when we moved from CA to NY…all of our possessions had to fit in the truck. No options allowed. And with two small children, their stuff took up a lot of that space.
So now I’m stuck constantly wondering, do we still have X or Y packed away somewhere in the basement, or did we give it away/chuck it on one of those moves? I just can’t remember any more.
But I think there is something to be said for sentimental stuff-keeping. I think the stuff you have should be 1) useful, 2) beautiful, or 3) sentimental in an important way. Like grandmother’s jewelry. I’m not sure a Pez dispenser qualifies!
Decluttering is an ongoing battle with me. How I’ve managed to accumulate so much stuff is a mystery — particularly as we’ve moved so often in the last five years and D has encouraged me (made me, more like) to purge each time. The one thing I didn’t purge during our last move was the bedside drawer — I simply dumped the contents in a box and vowed to do it when we moved. That was two years ago and my drawer has been a no-go zone ever since. No more. And I finally threw the pez dispenser. Now I just need to work up the courage to part with the cute gopher cell cover D bought me for Valentine’s day from a roadside servo in France…
Occasionally I’ll go looking for something and realise that I tossed it three moves ago. Sometimes that is a sad moment. Other times, it’s rather freeing to realise that I really didn’t need whatever it was…
I am rather daunted by the spare room, though. It has morphed into an electronics storage space — thank goodness that is mostly D’s mess to deal with. After he moves the gadgets on, I’ll get down to the rest of it.
I agree that it can be freeing to realise you can live without something. Even though I’m a hoarder too, I find it so thrilling when I do manage to declutter and lighten my load. We have a decluttering operation looming, and like you, I approach it with mixed feelings. Good luck with the spare room!
Oh, I hear you on the morning thing…dh and I have completely different rhythms. I am much more a morning person, he much more a night person, so really we do best around cocktail hour and dinner – otherwise we are never really on the schedule. Infuriating sometimes but that’s what happens when two people live together day in, day out – it must be why people sometimes succomb and by McMansions…
Charlotte: Decluttering always looms, doesn’t it. It can’t hover or wait patiently in the shadows, can it? No… I think the trick with the spare room — and any big decluttering operation — will be to approach it in little chunks. But which chunk to start with…
Courtney: I’m much better with mornings than I used to be — must be D’s influence — but I still need quiet to ease into the day. One day, maybe, our body clocks will work together. Until then… we’ll keep getting irritated at each other and working at some sort of compromise position. But I don’t think a McMansion is on the agenda…