The Backpack Press

February 28. 2015

When we moved into our current apartment, the place we call our house, I decided to splurge a bit and install six professionally designed closets. Our closets were all really large, but they were built in 1941 when I suppose people just hung clothes in them. We, on the other hand, put luggage and bags and shoes and boots and hiking gear and costumes, …

Well, you get the picture.

I emptied the shelves and started to toss and organize all the files of paper and sheet music I had stashed in my closet. I have a set of shelves that line the right hand side of my closet and I guess when I moved, I ran out of logical places to put things and I put them in the next best place – a completely illogical one, my clothes closet. And while I don’t just hang clothes in there, it would be nice to have the space to do that.

I tosses old Xeroxes, sorted all of my Christmas music – well, I think it’s all of my Christmas music – and I realized one really cool thing. When you stop yourself from having nice things because you already have things, it’s occasionally pleasant to realize once you’ve unloaded the old, tacky stuff, that you can now purchase replacement things that are nice. Long way around saying just this: I gave away, finally, all the ratty sheets I have been using, I gave away all the old pillows I was using, and even some I wasn’t using – so now, I feel terrific because I could go to Target and pick up new sheets.

The old sheets were functional, blah, and well, old. But now that they are gone, I can have nice sheets. So the decluttering isn’t only about having less but about having what you want. And that’s splendid.