A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step...

But watch out for that first step, it's a doozy! The first step in my personal renaissance is purging. Getting rid of the piles & piles of things some people (like my husband) may call junk. That first step is the hardest, there's no doubt. I am a hoarder. I freely admit it. And I do understand my compulsion to hoard makes my life unnecessarily difficult. But understanding doesn't make it any easier to get rid off this 'junk'. What does make it easier is taking that first step.

For 22 years, my family owned and operated a moving and storage company, which made it very easy for me to save everything, but when the business closed, I had to bring all of that stuff to my house and find places for it. Yikes! I avoided this task for a long time because I knew it would totally stress me out. But I also knew I could not move on to step two without completing step one. I'm very methodical. Most of the time it is my downfall, as in "I can't possibly move on to step two until I complete step one. Oh well, screw it." But I made a commitment that this would be different! I'm being re-born, for crying out loud. Gone is the old me, the new me is awesome!

I'm telling you that as hard as step one is, it only gets easier. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the fact that I'm just getting tired of doing it, looking at it and trying to figure out where to put it and so I'm much more receptive to the idea of throwing it away or donating it to charity. This is how it usually goes: I go out to my patio and look at the big pile of stuff there, then I go to my carport & look at the big pile of stuff there. I am overwhelmed and so I wander around looking at stuff, wondering where in the world to begin. Then I find something that I can make a decision on, such-and-such needs to go here, so I do that. After that it just starts to flow.

I am proud to say that I'm almost finished with my purge! My patio, carport & front room should be clutter-free by the end of this week! Which is a very good thing because my baby chicks arrive this week and I need to move on to step two, building a chicken coop.

Peace!