Though there are several areas in my home that still need a good decluttering, I haven’t been up for taking them on lately. Part of it has been my desire to soak up the last of the late summer weather, but as I listen to the wind and rain outside today, I’m thinking it won’t be long before I pick an area and dive in – stay tuned.
In the meantime, in a much less organized fashion, whenever a stray item crossed my path this week and I didn’t immediately know it to be beautiful or useful (or both), I questioned why I was keeping it. Most things did not make the cut. Here are some stray items that got their walking papers this week:
This is a large -and I do mean LARGE- chunk of fancy French soap that’s been in our medicine cabinet for about three years now. Our friends from France gave it to us when they visited, along with a bottle of fancy liquid soap, which unfortunately shattered on the journey, leaving tiny shards of glass imbedded in this big square of soap. It seemed a shame to waste it, so I scraped a layer off the surface, hoping to remove any stray pieces of glass. But I cringe every time I think about rubbing that bar on my bare skin and maybe, just maybe, having a piece of glass still be there to leave a nice bloody scrape in its wake. As a result, it’s never been used. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat.
This weird little thing is a massager called “Love Fingers”. I bought it from a vendor at a fair somewhere – I think I was just bored and wanted to buy something that day. I’ve used it exactly twice. I am happy to say that today, unlike ten or so years ago, I could walk through a fair or festival and not walk out with something like this (although I WOULD probably still get a deep fried Snickers bar).
These are just a few of the small pins and buttons I’ve tossed this week – somehow, despite never wearing something like this, EVER, I’ve managed to amass quite a collection of them. I don’t really like “collections” of things, so I tossed them all, along with this…
The container that I was keeping them in. I know I got this as a gift from a good friend in college. I think it was designed to hold potpourri, but I’ve always used it to hold jewelry (or you know, a bunch of useless pins). It makes a crappy earring holder, because you have to dump them all out and dig through to find a matching pair. Good thing I’ve held on to it so long, right? SO USEFUL!
I also got rid of three pairs of sunglasses that I never wear, because the lenses are too wide for my face and make me look like a giant bug. Sexy.
And nothing is more useful than an expired international driver’s license, right? I actually never even used this, because the car we rented in Europe was a stick shift, and I only know how to drive an automatic, so Ron had to drive the whole time. Glad I’ve kept it for a whole year past it’s expiration date.
These are just two of the probably fifteen empty jewelry boxes I had in a drawer. I have a jewelry box that I keep all my treasures in, so I have never used these once the jewelry was taken out. But I kept them because I thought I might need them for…okay, I don’t know. I have no idea why I kept these. Stupidity? Maybe.
And then of course, there was this:
Someone brought this to me as a souvenir from Mexico. I think that might be a snake on his (her?) head. I don’t need any further reason than that to toss it.
Dumping these things isn’t as satisfying as doing a whole organizing project where you can really see the difference in the area you’ve cleaned. But I feel just a little lighter having let them go. Try it! The next time you see an item in your space that you’ve kept forever but never use and don’t find particularly beautiful, decide if you really want to be keeping it. Share what you tossed in the comments if you’re so inspired!
finding lagom 