Purge-atory

 


When your favourite slippers look up at you with a face that says "gee, give me a break already", yep, it's time to let them go. I know, it is almost summer, but spring cleaning doesn't really have a timeline. I recently moved from my clay studio to create a smaller home studio, hence, decisions had to be made about the necessities and what I should purge or pass along. 

The trick to actually getting rid of stuff is to stop treating every object like it has a future career ahead of it. Creative folks know this is especially difficult. Every item suddenly has irreplaceable potential. If you haven’t used it or worn it in years, chances are you won't need it. A good strategy is to put things in a donation box out of eye view, otherwise rescuing them becomes too easy. I remind my hubby that our home is not a retirement community for old cords and “just in case” containers and boxes. He knows that I get great pleasure from recycling all of the mystery lids and plastic containers that somehow accumulate over the year.

I hereby give you permission to chuck out that receipt from 2017, or that shoelace that might belong to something important. Perhaps I'm not sentimental enough, but most of those birthday cards won't become museum artifacts. (Take a photo.)  Even if your rollerblades "spark joy" and will become your next hobby -- just say "sorry Marie Kondo!" 
Clearing some space or making room for something new can, well ... feel good!


Photos: waering my old slippers and my snazzy new ones, 2026


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