Stuff = issues

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. — William Morris

so the ex dropped me off in dallas, spent the night and bravely made another 8.5 hour drive to missouri on his own to collect a lot of belongings.

he filled up the entire back of his toyota matrix (including the seats folded down) with stuff from x number of years ago and brought it to texas with him so we could bring it back to tucson. and two more loads are in storage at his grandparents' house. ugh. really? really?

i don't even know what the heck is there. we went through the stuff he brought back to make sure that we needed everything. um no. we didn't. let's see.

*figurines that i got every year on my birthday
so i was a little sneaky, brought them back and promptly took them to goodwill. my mother would KILL me if she found out. whoops.
*hideous pottery i made in high school
my mother: "are you sure you don't want that?
me: "yes mom. i don't want it"
mom: "are you sure? you couldn't use it to put your keys in it or something?"
me: "no mom, i don't want it and i have a ton of things that i can use to put my keys in."
mom: "well, are you sure you don't want to keep it? i don't want you to regret later on that you got rid of it."
me: "YES. i'm sure. i don't want it. i'm not going to regret it. it's ugly."
mom: "okay."
*old toys that i have no sentimental attachment to
*my Furbies (oh heck yes i kept them.. and i even found the original receipt! lol)
*gummies (back in high school my ex and i would go to the mall and always buy gummies..why i kept these 8-9 year old gummies, i have no idea.. the really scary thing? they were still soft and he wanted to eat one!!)

my mother is the number one problem i have with getting rid of things. my mother guilts me into trying to keep a lot of it and then really gets on my case if i get rid of it.

well, in any event, i was left to take care of a number of boxes full of stuff so i was forced to go through my house again and declutter. i took a nice trip to the goodwill and got rid of a huge box of stuff. yay! i also have stuff i need to post on craigslist so that i can make some extra cash and free up some space.

while i was happy to find some of the goods (silverware that was a wedding present that i couldn't wait to finally use and a huge waterford crystal bowl), i was extremely overwhelmed. i had lived without this stuff for seven years, why did i want to bring it in my life? a lot of it came home with me and a lot of it stayed in dallas for my mom to put on her next yard sale.

i really enjoy living in my small duplex. it's most likely under 800sqft. but i'm not too sure on the dimensions. what i do know is that i can't have a lot of stuff and really, how much stuff does one person and 3 animals need? not much. to have a spare closet overflowing with stuff is just not sensible. so when anything new comes in, i'm always the first to make sure one thing goes out so that my house is perfectly edited to my tastes.

i live by the saying (not verbatim, obviously) "don't have anything in your house that doesn't make you happy or make you smile."

right now i have a number of items in my house that don't do that. i think this weekend i'm going to get that stuff up on craigslist and get rid of the clutter in my house as well as the emotions that are attached to a particular object...wish me luck