I wish I had something to add that enumerates progress. I de-cluttered a half bottle of wine? Oh, well. . .

I think I'll chill out this week and make more of a push on the weekend. As we prepare for the upcoming school year I have appointments that tie up a couple of days. In the meantime, I enjoy reading remarks from folks who discover this series of threads and add insight into their own predicaments. Every new burst of "I want a cleared out house also!" gives me momentum to keep working. Thank you, all, for that.

Hazarding a guess here, I think I'm not the only child of parents who lived through the Great Depression, who were from frugal families anyway (truly pioneers, to the Pacific Northwest in the late 1880s!), but who really tightened the belts during hard times and never quite learned to loosen them again. The non-verbal message plus the "take care of your stuff" overt lectures created what I am today--someone who examines everything twice before letting go of it or figuring out where it needs to be use or reused or sold.

In an ecological sense, this isn't a bad set of hard wiring. We SHOULD look at what is right here first and reuse it if possible. Too much is disposable in our modern society. But when it comes to living comfortably in your space, it is a troublesome mindset.

SRS