Passive-Aggressive Clutter

I’ve been thinking about where I want my life to end up. I have lots of half-formed ideas and hazy concepts of a life I want, but have had no real epiphanies about a clear goal to work towards. I know what I like, but not what to do with it. My opinions and values have matured a lot in the past few years, but I know I still have some growing to do.

However, last night I had a moment of clarity. Prior to this, I have been saying to myself, "I need to get organized." or, "I need to clean___." In fact some of my goals for 101 things center around organization and destashing of my many interests. Last night though, I was trying to fall asleep, and I was picturing the places I live and work. (More public revelations!)

I need to get rid of the clutter! I have too much stuff piling up in too many places, both at work and at home. I think, "That’s cool, I want to do that!" and I start, but stop part way through. Or I begin to clean up, but get sidetracked by more ‘fun’ stuff. Or I just procrastinate because I think I can do it later.

No more. I am going to get rid of the stress this stuff is causing me. And I have started. When I started knitting, I was so excited to be able to connect to anyone who loved this as much as I do, I wanted to read everything I found about people who knit. So I marked all blogs I came across. Now I have been saying I have too many blogs marked, so I can’t read them all. I use Google Reader, and I had my blogs sorted in categories such as ‘podcasts’ or ‘crafty blogs’ or ‘blogs i love’. I had one folder labeled ‘part one blogs’. This was where the majority of my 705 blogs (as of Monday this week when I checked) were stored. I have been deleting a few at a time that I know I don’t really get much out of or who have not posted since July of last year(!) this week, but tonight, after my moment of clarity, I decided I was just going to do it. I deleted the whole of the ‘part one blogs’. Yes, there were a number of great blogs in there. The truth was I just skimmed them though, and mostly just marked that I had read them without really doing so. So now they are gone. I have 147 left! While this is still a fairly large number, and I may still decide to get rid of a few, most are ones that I enjoy and read. Plus the podcasts, which I can listen to while doing a variety of things. I feel a bit better now, at least about my electronic clutter.

Now I’m off to deal with another section of my stress!