I’m sorry guys. I thought I had this post set up to automatically publish at 6:00 AM Monday morning, and discovered today that it never posted. My apologies. Apparently I still need to do some work on writing posts ahead of time setting them up to publish later. It’s now Tuesday afternoon, but here is Monday’s post:
The weather is cooler, so I feel better. Plus crashing in bed for a few days definitely helped. As a result, I’ve picked up a little steam in clearing things off my bathroom counter. The items are going into 4 categories: Put Away, Throw Away, Give Away, and Give Away. Let me explain.
The Put Away is often more complicated than it sounds. My cupboards and drawers under the bathroom sick are pretty full. Organized, but full. So when I need a new bottle of cough syrup, I’ve often filled up the empty space where the former bottle of cough syrup used to reside. Thus putting the new bottle away often requires that I get rid of something that I shoved into that empty space. Deciding what to get rid of takes energy, so I side-step the whole process and just leave the new cough syrup on the counter.
I have a real problem throwing things away. (More about that some other time.) Sometimes I find something in a drawer that I’ve completely forgotten about. I think I might still use, but I’m not sure, so I put it out where I will notice it. It will be something that would be totally useless to someone else. Or I find a product that I had almost used up, and then gotten tired of, and I feel guilty about not finishing it, so I put it on the counter trying to force myself to finish it up. But I don’t. Or I leave out an empty bottle of something I need to replace so I will remember to replace it. Then when I do, I don’t throw the empty one away because it seems to take just that little bit of extra effort that I don’t have. All of these things obviously go into the Throw Away pile. O more specifically, the Throw Away Waste Basket.
Next, there are the products that I’ve bought, and decided that I don’t like, or have gotten tired of. But there’s plenty left in the bottle. They are things that I can’t give to a women’s shelter, because they have been used, and thus do not meet the health code rules governing items that can be donated to an organization. These I sanitize as best I can, and give to a friend who knows other women who could use them. These are obviously Give Away items.
Then there are the items that are new that have never been used: toiletries from a hotel (have you noticed they sometimes give you new ones every day whether you need them or not?), or small gifts I have been given, or samples of makeup I have collected. These go into the Give Away To A Women’s Shelter pile. I don’t have the energy to deliver them, but I give them to the same friend, and she generously gets them where they need to go for me.
All this is by way of saying two things. First, I’m doing some picture documenting and I’m a little embarrassed at how much stuff I’ve accumulated. I mean, for goodness sake, I’ve saved some makeup that I bought 15 years ago and was afraid to throw away because I might want to go back to it one day. And secondly, it’s much easier to give things away if I actually know someone will use it. So giving items to my friend who knows other women who are in need makes it not only easier to pass things on, but makes me feel good as well. And that, as research has shown, gives our immune system a much needed boost!
So here’s to giving and boosting!
Take care,
Hannah
Zebra's Child 
It really can be cleansing and uplifting to declutter. I started doing that a couple of years ago in preparation of an eventual move out of our home.
One of the many good things about it is that you declutter, love it, then after awhile, you start to see things that you didn’t think of as clutter before, so you purge again. Then the process repeats itself several times. Slowly you get less and less and less cluttered. Of course, there’s always the new clutter that builds up as well……..