The Pleasure of Throwing Things Out

It has been for ages one of my foolproof vademecums in troubled times: I start to tidy up, sort things out, clean the bathrooms thouroughly, have a sharp look at my lipstick collection,  start to colour code  my clothes. Some mechanic, intellectually effortless "doing".

So, you could say, the more my house and flat looks taken care of, the more troubles I have?  Not necessary - because then people who live in clean empty lofts would have no problems at all, which is not true. "Weeding" is for me a great way of pondering about my own thoughts, having me-time and doing something almost mechanically, which afterwards shows an immediate result.
 And on top of it much better than ironing, when you see what you have done after 2 hours sweating in the cellar.
It gives me satisfaction to see, that I can change something in my life for the better - even if it is only the cupboard of glasses or the bedsheets - but you have an immediate satifying result; it is therapeutic, looking at things and saying goodbye to them.
Making room for new stuff, indeniably. But why not?

If you keep things/life/cooking/car/etc. too static, it all gets very dusty and liveless. Concerning our possessions, it is the most obvious part. Unless you have such a big house, that you simply close one suite of and start to fill another one - good old times, when space was no question - then you are in trouble.

But nowadays, as most of us live a  life of 150 squaremeters in the maximum, we have to control the weeds and gather impulses by weeding out a lot of the stuff we accumulate over the years.
Nothing better for that than the life of a diplomat - you have to change houses every 3 to 4 years - it makes you weed like crazy!

The most difficult move I had here in Brussels - we had stayed in a house for 5 years and with it the feeling grew, that this would have been THE house for our family. Unfortunately it was not meant to be and we had to, in the true sense of the word, uproot again. All the stuff which had agglomerated during 5 years, with 4 children and 2 dogs and a lot of space and a huge garden, you cannot imagine.

Now I am more vigilant, not  to letting my Self get my roots too deep in a rented house - and I weed and weed and weed.

The same applies for clothes: we use so little of our wardrobe, hang on to so much stuff, we never ever will wear again - why hanging on to it? Let it go.

Loads of books do appear in our house, hard for me to get rid of them. But I have started to pass them on to others - the school library or friends -  at least no need to keep the paperbacks you will not read a second time.

What is nicer than on a rainy sunday make a cleear over in the kitchen cupboards - taking stock and doing some shopping in your own house? Amazing, what sometimes comes back to the light of day - f.e. tins with tonic water which expired in april 2008. Or a friend found out, that she will not be in need of buying plastic folders until 2056.

Weeding out childrens stuff is important too - they do not play there, if they rooms are too crowded. Very educational for them and on top of it very good situation for talking to your children too - no eyecontact and concentrated sieving of legos and playmobil can bring much interesting information out of an otherwise quiet child.
They have too much stuff anyway and are as happy as we are, to pass things on and get rid of them. Provided it is not the most beloved teddybear, Tom.