I cannot think of any time that I am more efficient than when I am procrastinating. For example, the last/only time I scrubbed my bathroom floor was in the middle of a big paper. Now that I’m out of school, there is a lot less to procrastinate, but every once in a while opportunities come along, and last week that opportunity was needing to unpack. Matt and I didn’t check any bags for our vacation this year, which I found to be very impressive and certainly make the whole process of packing a lot easier. Technically, it made unpacking easier than it could have been, but I spent a few days overwhelmed by all the clothes on our bedroom floor and the impossibility of sorting it all into different loads of laundry.
However, as my closet grew emptier in direct proportion to the spreading chaos on my floor, I became inspired to do another round of decluttering. Matt and I got rid of tons of clothes back in March, and I tried to be picky as I switched my closet from fall/winter to spring/summer, but as I looked at the clothes left in my closet, I realized they are the same iffy clothes that I held on to “just in case” but still don’t wear. 95% of what I wear on a regular basis needs to be washed right now, meaning there isn’t much left for my not-favourites to hide under.
I have also come to the conclusion that I have a placemat problem. I think we have four sets of placemats, and we never use any of them. I have rolled and folded and stacked our placemats into drawers and shelves so they’d be available but out of the way, and… we just never use them. I must remind myself that owning/using placemats is not a hallmark of adulthood, it’s just a choice (and doesn’t make very much sense considering the tiny size of our dining room table). I can part with placemats and not lose any piece of myself (I muttered under my breath all week).
I also finally released three pairs of shoes from “shoe purgatory” to the free room of our building. Let me explain. Back in March, I gave up a few pairs of shoes that were worn out, ugly, uncomfortable, or a combination thereof. I put SEVEN pairs of iffy shoes in a box with a promise to myself that if I had not worn and loved any of those pairs by the end of summer that I would stop hoarding them no matter how pretty they look. The problem for me has always been that they are sooo pretty. I bought them because they were pretty and promised myself I’d break them in. I imagined how versatile they were because they’d be cute with a skirt, capris OR jeans!! And then I’d pass them over all Summer and pack them away each Fall. I have a picture of these shoes on my phone but no cord to upload it, so you’ll have to just imagine their cuteness. They are strappy sandals that would indeed have complimented a host of summer outfits, if only I could have walked all the way out of our building without regretting how unsteady it felt to walk.
This long weekend I tossed expired medicine and organized our bathroom cabinet, then “donated” (ie. left in the free room for anyone to take) a shopping bag of shirts and kitchen towels, one placemat set (baby steps, people!), and those three pretty pairs of shoes. It feels good 🙂