Why Un-Collecting?

Here we are at day one. It seems fitting to say a few words about what it is to un-collect. As you probably gathered, we will be getting rid of stuff this year. Since things come into our house easier than they leave, perhaps this is true for you, as well, we thought the challenge of a blog would keep the getting rid of a bit more interesting.

We tossed around many words...things, stuff, junk, clutter, but none of those really hit at the heart of what is going on here. We have some junk and stuff, we don't think of it as clutter and surely it must have been valuable at one time or how did it get into our house in the first place. I'm guessing we'll have a lot of the palm-to-the-forehead-what-was-I-thinking moments.

So, why un-collecting? Well, first of all it can serve two purposes and make us feel a bit better about our stuff. First, things collect, just check out the photo of what we call the landing strip near the front door. It's just the place for stuff to land when you come in the door, and believe me, stuff collects. Time for some un-collecting of this sort.

Second, it is possible to collect things, such as my collection of Santa memorabilia and our son's collection of smashed pennies. So some collecting is O.K. However, with the use of definition number two, we can look at our collections (like our books) and see if maybe some pruning, triming, or thinning might be in order (the un-collecting family likes to garden, too).

Having said all that, yes, we've each picked our items for the first week of the new year... stay tuned for the first dump of stuff and see where it lands. - un-collecting Mom.