Lighten Up

I am part of a wonderful online quilting community. Every year, instead of making New Year's resolutions, we choose a word to focus on for the year. This year, I chose LIGHTEN. I want to "lighten" my load of "things" that are holding me down. I want to make room for more creativity in my life. I want to "lighten" my attitude toward many things so that I become a better person.

In that pursuit, and with a big push from my husband, we have been very busy over the last few weeks.

We have shredded the contents of at least 38 rubber maid bins of "paper history"  such as old checks, records of moves (We have done a LOT of moving in our career),  old payroll receipts, college term papers for pity's sake...the kind of the stuff that once you pack it away, it is real easy to forget about. Having been POA's for various family members over the years, we not only had our stuff, we had records from three generations back. What a load!

Once the paper was done, we started culling the "hard" ware. We have been pretty brutal with this effort. But, every time I heard a voice in my head saying, "You might need this someday." or "This has been in the family quite a while," I just thought to myself TORNADO. So many people here in Birmingham had their life histories strewn over three states by the tornado in April of this year. If I had been a couple of miles south, all of this stuff would have been blown away and I would never have missed it. So I just pretend that is what happened. So here are some of the remains boxed up and waiting for the Salvation Army truck to arrive.

And, what, you may ask are we going to do with all the empty space? That storage end of our basement/garage is going to become my STUDIO!! It will not happen overnight, but it will happen. Because I have been willing to "lighten up" I now have room for creative space!  I am on a roll now.