Today we had a rental inspection, I was hoping we’d get an extra week before it happened but I knew it was to be around this time. I actually began making changes and tidying up a few days before I got notice because I knew when it did come I would not be able to get everything done in time and I was right.
Getting the email the inspection was going to take place today caused and emotional spiral which lost me several important days of cleaning up and organising. With an all night push last night, we got it done and the place was clean and as tidy as it could be with all these boxes. It was this that inspired me to go ahead and book the clean up crew to come take all my boxes and stuff away in 2 weeks.
That gives me just 2 weeks to finalise everything else I want gone and to get it all prepared for removal. With any luck they’ll also be able to take the stuff out the back that needs to be cleared as well, though I’m OK with waiting until the next month to get that cleared if they can’t take it. Having the house and yard cleaned up and ready for living in by the start of Spring will be amazing. It has been several years like this and I just want room and breathing space in my home again. I would like to move from this house in a year or two and move into a smaller home with even less physical space for me to be tempted to fill again. I know myself well enough to know my focus on decluttering and minimalism is a special focus for now, but that too will pass. Once I achieve my goal I will lose interest in it because my brain needs to have things to focus on and you can’t focus on achieving something you’ve already achieved. I’ve set myself a rule that from now on I can only have one hobby at a time and must finish with it before starting another. Finish with it includes working out what to do with the end products instead of just shoving in a cupboard somewhere.
I’ve also prepared a new question to ask myself moving forward. For now my questions are focused on if I need things right now in my life or are they just for fantasy me. Once I’ve achieved this big clean up, my question will then switch to asking myself ‘Am I willing to maintain this?’ whenever I want to buy something. My brain idealises what I think the item could do for me (solve all my problems, make me awesome, etc) and not on what it’s going to be like having that item around my home all the time. I can honestly say I have never once considered ongoing maintenance and time needed to take care of the thing. I loath the boring side of owning items (wash, dust, move, upgrade) which seems to never end. My brain is like, I’ve spent time being excited over this but now I just want to put it away and forget, why do I have to keep focusing on it in order to maintain it? I have decided if I can’t be as excited and committed to the never ending maintenance required, then I don’t want the thing because the maintenance is more important than having the thring.
Everything we own makes demands of us, there is only so much ‘us’, energy and time to go around and the more things I own the more that time and energy gets stretched. And when my time and energy get stretched I start to feel everything is a burden in my life instead of there to enhance it. My brain is incredibly sensitive to feeling obligated to look after others at the expense of my own sense of free time. In fact, feeling obligated is one reason I can’t work. It’s not that I’m spoilt or think I’m “too good” for that, it’s that my brain freaks out at drudgery and having to go to a job every day to do the same thing over and over feels like genuine mental torture. It’s only now that I can see this also expands to include items in my home that I own. I don’t just buy something to sit on a shelf and look good then forget about it, I have to keep coming back to dust it and clean it – it’s the having to keep coming back, the obligation, that fries my brain.
I am looking forward to having all this stuff gone for good and making sure I don’t replace it. I’m getting too old to have to do Swedish Death Cleaning again. I want this to be the once and only rite of passage to my older years and make the rest of my time about enjoying those years.