Cleaning Out

Last week my friend Sally and I challenged each other to The Big Clean Out. We were tossing back the iced coffee, talking about this and that when we came upon the subject of clothes. One thing we apparently have in common is a wardrobe full of clothes we don't wear for various and assorted reasons. We have a handful of things we wear, get washed and still somehow get buried and crinkled under the piles of things we are hanging on to that no longer fit or have lost their shape. We are hanging on for sentimental reasons, for frugal reasons or for unknown reasons, but hanging on we are. So we dared each other to get rid of about half of our cupboards and drawers. These last few days it's been lurking in the back of my mind, I've been mentally sorting what to toss and what to keep. I don't know if that exercise made it easier today when I actually hit the cupboard but I knew when I went in I would be ruthless. When the dust settled I had a double pile on the bed that kept falling over:

There are my feet for perspective on how high the piles were. I filled an orange garden trash bag and immediately threw it in the car and hauled it off to Renaissance, the clothes recycler. And now my half empty shelves:

Those feet keep wanting exposure, it must be the spicy red polish they got while trying to put off the sorting.

Metaphorically, this clean out was necessary for me to make space for what I am inviting into my life. All the dreams and hopes and excitement I started the year off with seem to have been put on hold. I just can't seem to get lift-off with any of it. Today I consciously made some room in my life for change and I'm crossing my fingers that what does blow in on the wind to fill those corners will bring me some long awaited joy.