there are flat surfaces under there somewhere...

And they look so good when they are revealed!

Those surfaces come and go here. And the love seat in the corner of the living room is a staging area that sees light of day every couple of weeks. My eBay room is also a staging area. But my hallway outside my office is now clear (if you don't count the upright freezer and my son's arcade game--the rest of the stuff is gone.)

There is a book I found (I can't say which shelf it is on right now, but I'm tired so am not going to look for it) called something like "Chop Wood Carry Water." It's a 70s natural living kind of manifesto, suggesting finding the sacred in the mundane is good for us. I think they were onto something, actually, even if it has the classic look of a 70s environmental Buddhist style manifesto. Enjoy what you're doing, enjoy the space you're improving, send the clutter onto the next home with good will and good feelings. Some things are meant to be kept, but a lot of it is too much. And when you get it down to those really important things, like the atlas that Patty described, then you're onto something.

She's also right about "insane commitments to your yard." But that is an untreatable disease. It gets pretty bad every spring. But even there, I am trying to bring this decluttering into play. How often have you bought bedding plants, only to have they die or become horribly root bound waiting for you to prepare the beds? I'm simply not letting myself buy any new stuff until I dispatch or move or use up the stuff that I have here. I cleared out some old bags of top soil (falling apart and had to be shoveled into the wheelbarrow) to fill in at the basketball hoop hole, and today I used 2 1/2 of the 3 bags of cedar mulch I still had out there from last year.

Decide which plants simply aren't working and how much work you're willing to go to to remedy the problem. I have a couple of those quandaries I'm working on now. And as soon as I find the saw I use for limbs, one of those problems, a Dawn redwood that has never done well, is coming out. (I think the saw must be keeping company with the missing pair of pruning shears.)

I moved the cannas today and there are a few roots and plants left over. I have a bunch of iris that came out of the ground. In the next week I'll find homes in the yard or give them away. The bed is finished and now I need to water it well. I'm sure it will look worse before it looks better. I took a photo this evening but the flash came on and it looks odd. I'll wait till daylight.

SRS