Today, for whatever reason, I decided it was the most important time ever to get some stuff out of the house, and that stuff I needed to remove meant the clothes I had separated out years ago- not days, or weeks, or even months ago, but yes, years ago- which have sat all this time in a corner of my bedroom, enjoying the quiet of that solitary area. Once I acknowledged I needed to donate those clothes finally, I looked in my bedroom closet and knew I had other items in it that could easily be let go of- and so the purging began I went through all of the shirts sitting on the shelf above the hanger dowel. I went through all of the cloths on the dangling on hangers. I found a bag of clothes that was stuffed in the back of the closet that had been sacked up before I moved out of the apartment into this house, and they had remained untouched until now. Certainly if I didn’t miss them all this time, I didn’t really need any of them now. They were bagged and added to the pile of donatables. And among clothes also chucked in the back of the closet were 7 pairs of blue jeans and 2 pairs of blue jean shorts that each had unfortunate tears or holes in them in less than deal locations- many, along the top outside edge of a pocket on the backside (evidently a weak spot in denim jeans). I polled on Facebook about what to do with old jeans, and one responder said she could give them to a friend who could use them in projects. A friend of my parents, she seemed like the best recipient for these discards, so I bagged the old jeans up separately and took them to my parent’s house to give to her.

Tonight, my bedroom closet looks empty and clean in back, and halfway empty with plenty of space on the dowel and on the shelf for new clothes. I hope to keep it that way. I like this minimalist experience. The pile of donatable clothes in the bedroom corner has grown to be 8 pretty full kitchen trash bags, which I will take to Steelbridge (formerly the Albuquerque Rescue Mission) for donation tomorrow on my wa to work. And I will be able to see that corner of the bedroom, cleared and empty, for the first time in a long time.

I’ll continue going through closets, drawers, boxes, shelves, and bags for a while to just get rid of whatever I can that I clearly don’t need any more.

In part, because it feels really good to get rid of stuff.