Spring Cleaning and Shopping

Last week was an incredibly stressful and emotionally draining week.  Actually starting the previous Saturday.  I worked like 8 days straight and saw Bruce for like 5 hours that entire weekend.  The week didn't get better- work was sucking and after an extremely uncomfortable conversation with my boss I felt even worse.  The only cure was to shop.

So Tuesday night I went shopping and got a bunch of clothes then Wednesday night I went shopping and go a bunch of stuff and Friday before class I got a bunch of crafty things to make a wreath.  I went shopping between work and school and trying to have a life.  The small shopping trips I had did a lot of damage.  I came home with 5 bags Wednesday night and instead of looking appalled by my shopping loot for once Bruce just looked kind of sympathetic.  Shopping is obviously a more agreeable outlet for stress than drinking.

Once I got all my treasures home it was very obvious that there was no room for new things in my house at this time.  My kitchen didn't want to hold my new awesome Tea gadget, my closet did not want more dresses and my dining room definitely did not want to accommodate all the fake flowers and reef stuff I'd purchased to be crafty.  Cleaning would have to be done and soon.

The week was so busy that I didn't get to it until Sunday.  Sunday I spent the whole day cleaning and organizing.  I made piles, bagged old clothes and shoes and at the end of the day you couldn't tell a lot was done but I still felt a great sense of relief as I saw the bags ready to go to Goodwill.

The hardest part is definitely parting with clothes.  I come from a long line of hoarders and I can talk myself into keeping anything...anything.  I just know that one day my clunky-sequined-Doc Martin-combat-boots are going to come back into style- I know it!  Or the dress my mother made me in high school may one day fit again and the adorable retro style Mary Jane's that have a heel broken will one day be fixed!  Then there was my 2001 ISA National Honors Society T-shirt.  Sure it has paint on it, but one day I'm going to start exercising and I'm gonna need grungy shirts to wear.  Sigh. I got rid of 15 t-shirts and kept 9.

I've heard about making quilts and blankets from old shirts before.  My sister made a quilt out of her old optometry shirts and I  have had a bag of about 20 TLU shirts sitting by my door for a while for her to do the same with mine.  But t-shirts from high school covered in paint I will close my eyes and add them to the bags.

Then I decided to hit my purses.

But I love my purses.  Sure I only carry the same purse for about 3 months and then move on, but one day I may really want to have that yellow leather banana republic purse Robynne gave me in high school.  Sure I didn't take care of it and the leather kinda dried out but I'm sure someone can fix it.  So now I have a laundry basket full of purses overflowing to my floor and hopefully tonight I can go through and get rid of 10 of the 36.  I think that's a reasonable number.  

The point is I made the effort and I think I made great progress.  You can see the floor of my bedroom and the floor of my closets.  I really am giving a lot of stuff to Goodwill, only I hope they don't go through it in front of me cause I don't think I want to see the looks on their faces when they see that I donated a red and black corset that Haley gave me years ago that I never used.