Clutter seems to accumulate effortlessly but somehow it requires great effort to de-clutter…unless you are forced to do so in a rather creative way.
I was forced to,
when I got up at 5.oo a.m. to a completely flooded house. Wednesday morning, I got up at 1.30 a.m.
thereabout, for some reason I could not go back to sleep. As I laid on my bed,
I heard what sounded like rain, so I remained under the covers until it was
time to get up to get ready for work, never questioning the legitimacy of my
conclusion. As I swung my legs off the
bed, and hopped off the bed, there was a splash and I was standing in almost 2
feet of water!
As I made my way
out of the bedroom I realised that the source of the water flow came from the
bathroom. Immediately my mind started
working overtime trying to determine how this catastrophe happened…what did I
do or not do. I recalled coming home the evening before to “dry” taps, which it
appeared, was the case for most of the day if not all. I remembered it was the bathroom tap that I
opened when I discovered the dried taps, it must have been that I forgot to
close the tap back…or maybe I just took for granted that water would not
return…
Now routines and
habits are a heck of a thing…and those are the shit that my evenings are made
of. There are certain things that I have
grown accustom to doing which has become second nature to me. I never had to consider the consequences those
routines and habits would have should something like this happened….not until I
had to!
When I get home on
evenings, after the usual stuff…eat, shower…relax…I get into my assignments
which require me using my laptop…the laptop which I leave on the rug in the
living room charging for the next day…get the picture?
Earlier in the
week I was on the hunt for my passport, took out my accordion file with all my
personal documents and intended to put it back where it belonged but it
remained on the rug in the living room too! Yup…
I swept water
throughout the entire house for at least 4 hours, had to solicit help to get
the rug out the house and furniture removed in order to complete the task at
hand. By the time I was done I threw out
four, maybe five bags of rubbish which consisted of bank statements from 2012
all the way to 2015, pay slips for the past four years, receipts for items I
brought over the years, school papers
and assignments from secondary school and a few other items I can’t
recall.
I was forced to
de-clutter my living space, something I had intended to do, at different times
throughout the years but never got around to it….and obviously kept adding to
it! Now that I have, it’s so much
clearer and spacious, easy to move around and more pleasing to the eyes.
 |
| Flooded corridor!!! |
I think that we
as humans accumulate things…different things that seem important to us at the
point in time; things that are sentimental in nature or just represents an era
in our lives…and while that is important, it is also important to remember that
every day we experience new things, met new people, create new memories and
find new things that represent us or things that become important to us for one
reason or the other….if we don’t rid ourselves of the old stuff, the stuff that
no longer add value to our lives, we can never have room for the new things
that can.
Having
de-cluttered my physical space (by force) it’s time to make new
memories…experience new things!