Decluttering and Doctor Who

Marie Kondo and the Angels Take Manhattan


I don’t know how much I’ve mentioned my decluttering over the past few weeks of my blog, but I’ve been watching Marie Kondo’s Netflix shows and The Minimalists documentary to keep myself inspired and to show myself new techniques and remind myself why I’m removing items from my house. It’s not just because there is so much stuff in there that it makes both my husband and me anxious walking around and looking at the full open closets and drawers and bookcases and everything. We don’t have the fanciest furniture, nor do we need to. It was never about the furniture (though I tried to make it about getting more canvas storage bins—more and more and more until EVERYTHING MATCHED IN THE HOUSE).

Honestly it was like a light switch went on as soon as I lost my job and wondered how long I could afford to buy things. I thought “I will sell everything I own, then I will be able to pay for as long as I need to!” But that wasn’t it either. We decided not to sell everything (we donated most of it except for the expired food. We weren’t filling up the landfill!) We shopped at Goodwill and stores that Plato’s Closet would look down on anyways. Hahaha. So why did we do it?

Like I said, part of it was the anxiety, part of it was my past history with STUFF. I went from being poor to having Social Security money because my mom died and buying almost nothing but books to being super fortunate to getting most of college paid for by scholarships and was in-state with a vehicle, so stuff wasn’t a problem. But then I had to get rid of my apartment full of my stuff and leave it all behind. I brought a LOT of letters with me though, and that’s what I spent the last day going through mostly was papers. So much cringe, so much encouragement, so many memories here for one more time before being tossed away or kept for another time.

About 95% of my letters mentioned God, the Bible, or how God was working through my life. It was weird to think back on a life that seemed so long ago. Now God seems like a distant memory, a relative that cut himself off because haters gonna hate. I had my entire life wrapped up in something that I cannot do now, and my entire paradigm has shifted for the better. I have more empathy for what people are going through. I’m more sensitive to mental health issues and how a person’s story is different from each person to the next and how that affects how they view life. And of course I now know the sting of what the church can do to a person, especially if they are in the queer community. I can show the love and support of a higher being without it being the wrathful God of the Bible that stones homosexuals to death like so many still claim should happen today.

But back to cleaning out my house…I went through my books and DVDs, and a large part of my life since 2005 has been the rebooted version of Doctor Who. I bought most of the thirteen seasons since then on DVD, but they no longer really make DVD players, and they don’t make TVs that go with the old players, so I’m still trying to find a compatible solution or if that era has ended, but I also bought a few books on the Doctor Who universe at large. Between that and mythology are the only “maybe” pile I have left. They spark joy and they serve a purpose. But has the time come for it to end in my life? I haven’t decided yet.

Is there anything in your life you haven’t decided on yet?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drunk Uncle Boundaries

Did That Seriously Come Out of Their Mouth? We all have that friend or family member who we wince when cornered by. They lock eyes, and it seems the conversation never ends. Worse, it seems like they have opposite views as you do, but they don’t care. They just nod their heads until you nod your head and pretend like you’re enjoying the conversation. Then they take that as their cue to continue for half an hour more. If someone tries to save you, there’s a 50/50 chance they will be pulled into the conversation too, depending on how skillful they are it could lean more heavily on the side of damage. I get you. There are fortunately many Facebook reels about this very topic. Just keep researching “narcissist” and eventually Facebook will point you to these very people. Some of them don’t possess empathy. Some of them have no idea what another person could feel or think besides themselves. They are stuck in their own corner of the world. I am no expert in this, but I took classes on bound...
Read more

Autism in My Own Words Part 1

Autism in My Own Words Part 1   I don’t know how we do it. Or how “normal people” do it… they gather, have parties, talk, drink, eat, “mingle,” etc. I find myself talked at while I find a person’s eyebrows or lips moving and try to lipread to help decipher through the noise what they are trying to say. I thought I was the only one contorting my face in a carefully practiced dance of lips, cheeks, and especially eyebrows to make level expert look what everyone else looked like what level easy looked like. I’ve been doing it my whole life, and I’ve been doing it so long that I’ve forgotten I’ve even been doing it. Until I got diagnosed with autism and found others like me. And my mask slipped. Suddenly I was “being autistic” and “not who I was before.” Everything was harder, and my eyebrows took more energy to move, my eyebrows could hardly stay awake, and so many more things took so much more energy. I have hardly been to a social gathering since then. But today I was talking ...
Read more

From A Candle

Let It All Burn To The Ground No, don’t let it all burn to the ground. Then you would be left with nothing but grief and nothing to start from. Change comes slowly and from using what you already have. I had a brilliant idea as I was falling asleep for a blog post, but of course I didn’t write it down or type it up, so poof it went! I needed some time by myself (which isn’t that difficult since I’m alone when my husband goes to work in the mornings as I’m searching for a job). I made it my self-care today to stare into a candle for five minutes and put on some music, hoping that would rejuvenate me. I was also hoping it would inspire me to write a post. I’ve been holding off on what I’ve been learning in Partial until after the New Year, making way this past week for change and hope and New Year stuff, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I felt like Christmas just went awry in my attempts at changing others. And I shouldn’t have been seeking to change others in the first place. So I’m sittin...
Read more