Sunday, April 27, 2014

Declutter Me

I'm still pretty motivated to get rid of stuff and declutter myself.

I'm hopefully set to get rid of one of my larger objects (a car) within the next day and a half. The guy was supposed to get back to me tonight to lock down a time that he would be able to make it up here. He hasn't, but I'm hoping that it'll still happen. I told him it had to be before Tuesday afternoon because that's when I have to go back to work. He sounds pretty interested in my spare parts too. So on top of the price of the car I plan to try to pawn off ALL of the spare parts I have for a pretty decent price. He's in it to make money, I'm in it free up my life. Win, win.

My storage unit is always an interesting thing. There isn't really enough room to make piles. I might make an effort to target my biggest items to make some room. I really would prefer two trailers there. But that's not possible. One for the dump, one for metal scrap, and then really I need an area for donating and selling too. The deeper I get into this, the less "keep" even feels like an option.

As it is now I need to use my van. A van load, one I can get together in a day or two, usually isn't worth the price of a trip to the dump. Unless I just go throw away crazy. Maybe.

Back to work for 11 days after tomorrow. For now I'll go watch another episode of Hoarders. Haha.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Hello, I'm Drive-by Andy

Hey everyone. Do you remember me? It's been a while.

The snow is finally melted and gone. I'm pretty sure for good for this year.

I haven't exercised in a while. Before I stopped I was to the point where I could run for 28 minutes straight. Pretty crazy. A multitude of things made me stop. Too many people at the gym suddenly. My feet/heels being in pain. Getting home too late. Simply being burnt out. I still have my membership, I'd like to think I'll get back soon.

Through some events at work I've been picking up extra hours on one of my days off every week. I'm also kind-of-maybe-technically the Assistant Manager now. Complicates the issues a bit. Anyway so now every other week I have 3 days off in a row, but the week in between I only end up with one day off. So in a span of 11 days I have one day off, and that's starting to get to me. I end up dreading the next long stretch as soon as the current one is over.

The van is falling apart. The exhaust is horrendously loud. I decided to buy a junkyard transmission for my old car and am in the process of trying to get that swapped in. If everything goes as planned I will be retiring the van when the time comes. I don't think I'm even going to try to sell it, I'll just scrap it.

I watched Hoarders for the the first time the other night. It's on Amazon Prime now. I'm not as bad as the people on the show, but I would say I'm definitely a bit of a hoarder. The show has really opened my eyes to some things. It all came together at the right time for me too. My plan is/was to move into the motorhome soonish. But I still have too much stuff everywhere. My parents house/yard, and storage. Which, by the way, my storage price has gone up $20 in the last 6 months, so now it's a pretty ridiculous amount every month.

I want to get rid of a large majority of it. I always have, but it's difficult for me. I'm starting to though. My standards for 'things to keep' have gone way up. I'm throwing things away that I would normally keep, or that I have kept for years. It feels great.

I've just finally realized that it, ALL OF IT, is the cause of so much in my life. My inability to do anything. My constantly feeling like I should be doing something else with my time. The most successful times in my life were when I didn't have all of this emotional, mental, and physical CLUTTER. If I ever want to move forward, if I ever want to be free and do what I want with life again, I need to let this crap go.

It's still a long road. I have a lot of stuff to sort, because I'm not at the point where I can just throw it all away without even looking at it. But I'm happy with where I am with it. I gave away some chairs to a coworker that I was keeping for sentimental reasons. Now they're being used and my coworker is happy to have them. They took up way too much space in storage. I plan to get rid of my washer and dryer soon. That will be a lot of space freed up. I'm pretty sure I'm ready to throw out my old couch. Lots of sentimental value there.

The weight and financial cost of it all is simply too much finally. That's a good thing.

Have less, do more, be more. All of these things are tethers, keeping me in this place in life when I could be rolling in my motorhome witnessing beautiful landscapes, lives, and moments.

The cost of a life fulfilled, happy, and free. That's worth it.