Purge As You Go

Sparkplugging is continuing our tradition called ‘Spark an Idea Thursday’. Each week we’ll be sharing some great ideas for a topic of interest to our readers. We invite you to grab our image and carry the tradition through to your own blog! If you do, please link back to this post so we know where you were inspired!

This week we’re Sparking an Idea About Purging.

I’ll admit it. I could use a good purge. I’ve got piles of papers, closets full of stuff, and storage room full of … well more stuff. I’d love to get rid of most of it.

The problem is the sorting. If I could just take it all and trash it, that would be easy. But I can’t. I have to go  through it, deciding what to keep, what to trash, and what to donate. That process is really horrible because in order to sort, you have take every thing out. That gives you a bigger mess than what you started with. And when you’ve finished sorting (assuming that you do), then you have to deal with the keep stuff….which for me means just piling it again. The whole thing is too overwhelming.

I suppose if I wasn’t careful I could end up on one of those Clean House shows, which wouldn’t be so bad if I got new furniture out of it. But despite my purge-reluctance, my house isn’t that bad. I think its because I do purge a little bit as I go. I deal with mail the moment it ends up in the house so I don’t have piles of junk mail waiting to go into the trash. A couple times a year I go through my books, and sell some on Amazon.com  to deal with my overcrowded book shelves (and to make room for new ones!). You won’t find Happy Meal toys or other junk stuff because once its left somewhere, I pick it up and throw it out (My kids have never seemed to notice).

I guess this makes me a purge-as-you-go type person. For the most part, the stuff I keep, is stuff I need or will use. There are exceptions because there is stuff I needed at one time that I don’t need now that I could probably part with. But that would take too much work and make a bigger mess. So I guess I’ll wait until I move. I’m a master purger when I move…the more you purge the less you have to pack and carry!