Work In Progress

It feels like the more I clean up, the more mess I make. 

I spent most of the holiday yesterday cleaning and organizing my bathroom and linen closet. I don't know how I had all that stuff stuffed in there. It certainly won't go back, not in any neat and orderly way anyway. 

You can't organize yourself out of too much stuff. 

So I'm tossing what's expired, what I'm not using anymore, what I haven't used in a long time. At least, that's the intention. I don't like to get rid of things. I'm trying to change my mindset around that. I tend to store too much in my house and on my body, probably in my head and in my heart as well.

These things tend to repeat across all platforms.

I miss having a room I can dedicate to decluttering and organizing projects. Now, when I empty a room and don't get it all back to where it goes in a day,  I have trails of breadcrumbs all around my place. I hope they lead me out of the dark wood. I'll just take each little area where I put things that don't belong in or near my bathroom or linen closet as a little project, set a timer, and work quickly.

That's the plan. Don't think too much. Don't agonize. It's just stuff.

I tell myself this all the time, but stuff also carries memory, hopes and dreams, energy beyond the physical. We attach meaning. Someone once said that clutter is a delayed decision.

It's a work in progress. 

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.