16 Years to a Simplified Life

When we moved into our new home, we had piles and piles of boxes to go through.  For four years after we moved to a new state, we had moved from a rental house to a furnished rental house to another furnished rental house to my mom’s house (for a few weeks while our house was being finished).  We had boxes from our big move-to-a-different-state move that we had not even opened until we moved into our new home. Traditional decluttering rules might say if we didn’t need it in four years, it could be tossed.

However, I just couldn’t toss a box without knowing exactly what I was tossing, so I started going through each dusty, cardboard box.  In one of the boxes, I found a book.  A gem of a book:

I remember receiving this book from a woman I did some administrative work for in college. She was going through a decluttering journey, and I received books from her and random, unopened beauty supplies.  The hair products and nail polish are long gone (I think), but this book has stuck with me.  I have read it multiple times and started implementing the “30 days” more times than I can count.

Twelve years after she gave it to me, we moved and it got stuck in a box, not to be see again for four years.  I came across it again recently and with it came some nostalgia and sadness. Seeing this book reminds me that I’ve been on a simplifying/organizing journey for over 16 years, and I still feel like I’m not even close to where I want to be.

The Post-it notes stuck on different pages throughout the book are a reminder of good ideas I never implemented, or if I did, never consistently implemented.  The book was written in 1998, and the ideas may be outdated, but it still stands as a reminder that I have been striving to finally “be organized” for so long but have still never reached that point.  “Get organized” is still something I add to my New Year’s resolution list and my Big Goals list all the time. Wow.

I’m not really certain if this post has a point.  Really, it’s just to serve as a reminder to myself that I need to take the time to focus on this “Get Organized” journey.  I need to prioritize the small steps that I know I need to do.  I need to stop saying I don’t have time.  I do have time.  I just don’t prioritize them.

I need to not find this book sixteen years from now and wonder why I never pushed myself to take the steps to get there.

Time for one last read. I hope.