Everything in its Place®
Get Organized – Save Time to Enjoy Your Life
Regrets After Decluttering
When my mother passed, and my father cleaned out the house, there were 2 items I didn’t think to ask him to save.
- One was a picture I had made for my mother. It was just a paint by number, but it was a picture of a woman celebrating the Sabbath on velvet and she had framed it and kept it on our living room wall.
Thinking back
- The second regret was sheet music I had since I was around 12 or 13 when I was taking piano lessons. They were all popular songs. I never could get the left-hand notes right or coordinate it with the right hand, so the piano teacher taught me guitar chords on the piano for the left hand. I had all this sheet music from popular songs of the day, and my Dad pitched them. Now, I did get the actual piano when he moved to Florida, but I wish I had that sheet music to go along with it!
Here’s an article of items other people regretted losing. It appeared in a blog called SpareFoot.
You might to check it out: decluttering regrets
Have you ever tossed something when you were decluttering that you wish you still had?
Comment below.
Hope you had a great Valentine’s Day!
Eileen
Are you Prepared?
Sorry for your losses and speedy recovery physically and emotionally to all the people who have gone through the hurricanes recently.
Think about it. You might not have been a hurricane victim, but are you prepared if you are ever in an emergency?
Whether it would be due an earthquake, tornado, hurricane, forest fire or flood and you were going to have to evacuate your residence that might not be there when you returned, what would you take? Seriously think about it.
If you were in an emergency situation, what would you take?
What are the 5 most important items you would grab if you were in an immediate hurry?
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What are the most important items that would fit in your car trunk if you had more time?
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Are you prepared to sit out anything for any length of time?
Do you have extra canned food?
Do you have a non-electric can opener?
Do you have food that doesn’t need refrigeration or electric or gas cooking?
I know I’d grab my purse with IDs and credit cards and if time permitted more important documents from a safe.
I’d also want key electronics: cell phone, laptop, hard drive and USB sticks that have some data not on the laptop and cords for all of those.
And I’d certainly grab some clothes and jackets as well as water bottles.
Our cars always have flashlights, but that’s as prepared as we are if we weren’t home.
It’s one reason my father taught me from the day I was 16 and drove a car:
- Never go below ¼ tank of gas
- Always keep a spare $20 in my wallet in a separate section for emergencies.
You may think it will never happen to you, but you just don’t know.
The Girl Scout and Boy Scout mottos are: Be Prepared.
Are you?
What STUFF are you Keeping on your Desk or in your House?
Yes, some “thing” may make you smile.
You bring the item into your office or your house, and it gives you that smile maybe one or two more times.
Sometimes, though, it doesn’t even do that much–
- Like that funny T-shirt you bought that sits in your closet because you wouldn’t be seen in public with it on.
- Or some advertising gimmick with the vendor’s info printed all over it– but it does nothing at all.
Advertising Gimmick
Think about it –
How many “things” are wasting precious desktop space
or drawer space that aren’t useful?
How many “things” are causing clutter in your house?
You have all these “things” that no longer give you the same reaction you had when you first saw it. Instead you have a bunch of “things”, often called “stuff”, that just take up space and often end up in piles.
And if you collect too much “stuff”,
you have overload,
which causes overwhelm.
- It’s one more thing in a pile.
- It’s one more thing to waste space.
- It’s one more thing in your way.
- It’s one more thing to take care of.
Instead, collect moments in your life:
The moment your child took his/her first step.
The moment your child built his or her first Lego creation.
The moment your child lost his first tooth. (My grandson swallowed his with popcorn Friday night.)
The moment your child went to kindergarten, high school, or her first dorm room.
The moment your child graduated from middle school, high school, or college.
I look back at the scrapbooks I made of my children growing up, and I remember those times – the birthday parties, the Lego builds, the bicycle training, the dances, and the graduations. And now I take pictures of my grandchildren’s moments.
Graduating Dental School
Those are the things that really are worth saving.
And if you are lucky, you were able to capture those precious moments in a picture. Digital storage is so much easier than paper storage, and you will always be able to re-live that moment in your life.
It’s the moments that make life worth living,
not the things you have.
Too many things can make you feel frustrated.
They can end up in piles never to be looked at again.
They take up valuable space that you could use for other items.
They create clutter.
Stop collecting things and take pictures that are precious moments–
Skiers Take Picture With Cell Phone
not a zillion –
just enough to cherish the moment.
And don’t forget to take time to delete the bad or duplicate ones! Otherwise your computer will be stuffed too!
A backup hard drive just for pictures is a great idea to keep the computer space free!
What things or stuff do you have that you can release?
Comment below.
