Clearing Out

I mentioned last Friday that I have been cleaning out stuff from the house.  I'm on a roll!  More things are boxed up to be dropped off at the thrift store.  This includes, yes, another set of dishes.

Why would a wannabe minimalist have yet another set of china?  Well, the story behind this set is that it too was a wedding gift.  I used these dishes (white stoneware) until we moved across the Pacific Ocean to the end of the world.  It's a bad idea to move breakable china that far.  So I loaned the dishes to a friend to use.  Twelve years later, when we returned the final time from Indonesia, my friend told me she had given the dishes away.  No big deal.  Except.  About six years ago, she found them in her attic and returned them to me!  My younger daughter took them, used them happily.  But now she has moved across the US and elected to not take them.  Back those dishes came to me.  I don't need them.  I don't have room in my little place.  So those dishes are history.  And I'm OK with that.

Then there are the other things-- a few knick knacks, a few books, some yarn that I will never knit into anything.

One other item that is leaving is a wooden quilt rack.  Back in the day when I lived in Oregon and had a business that involved displaying handspun yarn and other fiber related items in a pleasing fashion, I used the quilt rack to hang those things on.  But I don't have a useful reason to keep the rack now.  It has simply been in the way in the guest room.  After advertising it for sale on a local resource exchange, I have a buyer.

What amazes me is although I have been decluttering and decluttering on a mostly consistent basis, there is still so much stuff around.  Obviously, I still have a ways to go to be comfortable with how much I've cleared out.