Donation Bags

For a week now, I’ve been playing around with this idea of what if.  What if I made some small changes that could help me focus on what is important, help me feel more awake.

I have been limiting my time on the internet while the girls are around.  I might do a quick check of email or facebook, but I have been exploring what it would be like to not be consumed (not wasting time on Pinterest) before they go to bed.  And let’s face facts, once they go to bed, I’m less likely to get on the computer because I’m tired….because I turned into my dad and go to bed by nine….or 8:30….don’t judge.

In this past week, I have completed three projects that I have been putting off forever.  I organized my craft table, our kitchen pantry and a hallway closet.  Three projects that I have been putting off for months.  Do you have an area of your house that you are embarrassed for others to see?  Well, that was my craft table.  Of course, the girls found reasons to take guests down to the room in which my craft table lives.  Come look at my bike, they would say.  Ignore the huge mess, I would add.

It occurred to me that this idea of spring cleaning doesn’t work for me in the spring.  There is too much going on.  Or maybe I was spending too much time on the internet….  Either way, these recent days of school winding down and no homework has given me some extra time for these projects.

Of course, if you clean/organize anything, you probably end up with bags of trash/donations.  Last night I was cleaning out the hallway closet that holds linens and other crap (so glad we kept that ripped mattress pad for years).  I was filling up quite a large donation bag.  I found the curtains that we bought for the girls’ room a few years ago that we haven’t had on their window since the year we bought them.  I remembered when we purchased them, which is strange because I don’t normally have such a good memory of purchasing random household items.  What is memorable is that when we bought them, finances were pretty tight.  And those curtains seemed like such a big purchase…and such a necessity.  Such a necessity that they have been sitting in a closet for years….

I started to think about all of this stuff that was going in the donation bag.  And there were similar memories for a few of these other items.  It was such a sacrifice to buy these items, but years later, they are nothing more than items going in a donation bag.  Hopefully they will actually get used in their next life and not sit in someone’s closet for years.

Isn’t that the way of stuff?  It seems so important at the time.  Wants always disguise themselves as needs. 

And then they end up in a donation bag.