The Same....Only Better

Do you make New Year's resolutions?  I do.  Every year.  Do I keep them?  Have you seen me lately?  Do I look like a size 6?  But I love the start of a new year -- it's like a blank page waiting to be written on.  The promise and possibilities are limitless.

So raise your hand if you've ever made a New Year's resolution to organize your house?  Yup...it's right up there with lose weight and get fit.  Now raise your hand if said New Year's resolution came to a crashing halt after you tossed a couple of old sweaters and straightened up the linen closet.  Thought so.  Me too.  But this year's going to be different.  No, really...it is.  I spent December feeling mildly frustrated.  While everything about the season is based on stuffing the turkey and stuffing the stockings and stuffing the presents under the tree, all I could think about was "destuffing" the house.  The breaking point came when I thought I broke my toe kicking something that had been relegated to the floor for lack of anywhere else to put it.  After uttering a long, loud string of expletives, I sat there with my bag of frozen peas on my foot and thought, "something's got to give."

And that something is all the stuff.  I'm getting drastic this year.  Not just organizing the stuff but clearing it out.  And not just clearing it out.  Not letting it in the door in the first place.  My new mantra is going to be "Do I need this or do I just want this" and it's going to be applied to every single purchase this year.  Mind you, I'm not going minimalist.  I've been reading some of those blogs and websites and some of those guys are extreme to the max.  I'm going for the happy medium.

But why the blog?  Accountability, that's why.  Resolve to yourself to do something and quitting is easy.  But put it out there and it's not so easy to cave.  I learned this over the course of 2012.  My friend, Katrina and I had a year long weight loss challenge.  Every month she posted our results on her blog.  Let me tell you, every time I thought, "screw this", my next thought was, "damn, it's going on her blog."  So here I am...being accountable.

On another note...So far the hardest thing I've found about starting this blog was coming up with the title.  I really wanted something about stuff, but everything I came up with was taken -- Too Much Stuff; No More Stuff; Enough With the Stuff; It's Just Stuff...  Hell, even Every Day Is Garbage Day was taken.  Oh, and let me clear up one possible misconception about my title -- I don't have to tunnel through ceiling high boxes of stuff to get from one room to the other.  Really...I don't.