Now with 97% less clutter

If you follow my Tweets (the Twitter sidebar, over yonder) you know that I've become a Freecycle fanatic. While I've never acquired anything from Freecycle, I've been Freecycling our stuff on a regular basis. I try to Freecycle at least one thing a week. If you're not familiar with Freecycle, it's essentially an online network for offloading the stuff that you don't want anymore. I used to be a regular charitable organization donater. I would collect the stuff that we needed to purge and usually call Purple Heart every few months to come and pick the stuff up. It would be gone in one fail swoop and I never knew what became of our stuff. With Freecycle, it's more a case of divvying up our stuff and dispensing to individuals. I really like the idea of getting to choose who I give my stuff to and I like hearing back from the person, after they've picked up, letting me know what they plan to do with the stuff. It's a great system and I've Freecycled such oddities as my underwear (Un-worn, new undies, thankyouverymuch) and such treasures as my stash of scented candles (burning candles + toddler = 911 + Texas Children's Hospital - expensive insurance ER co-pay +/- CPS getting called).

I've really become addicted to the concept of living clutter-free. I'm proud to report that currently, you can open most any drawer or closet in our house and find only the bare necessities and/or the things that we treasure. It's a wonderful, wonderful feeling. This new clutter-freedom came in super handy last week, when we had new carpet installed in all of the bedrooms. While the workers would move the furniture, I was told to get everything off of the floors on the closets. Ordinarily, this task alone would have been a weekend-long event. These days though, that task entailed moving a couple of Rubbermaid containers of kid clothes (baby girl clothes awaiting the next baby girl to be born in the family--come on Jill--go team Pink!) and picking up some shoes. It took about 30 min to clean out all of our bedroom closets.

Freecycle itself has become an addiction for me. As soon as I freecycle something, I start scouring the house for other things to purge. When I go on one of my "tears" the kids and cats always look at me in fear (luckily for them, you can't freecycle living creatures).

This image has always struck me:

These are the only belonging that Gandhi had at the time of his death. While we're still a far-cry from this, we're doing so well.

"But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.”--Mohandas Gandhi