Nearly four months on and I'm not sure I have made a whole lot of concrete progress in the great decluttering and simplification project, apart from in my head, which has moved on a lot!
On the plus side, I have got rid of 4 giant binbags of stuff, and 3 binbags and two boxes to charity shops. I have also been reading a lot about minimalism, and have even begun to sell the concept to my partner, who is something of a hoarder and has a serious paperwork habit which tends to spread out of his study and all over the house, much to my annoyance and frustration.
On the downside, I have not yet satisfactorily decluttered any one room. I have made inroads into the bathroom, the kitchen, our bedroom, the guest room, and my office, but there is just so much to do that I run out of steam before anything is completed, which is very discouraging.
However - I have greatly reduced the amount of clutter coming into the house (being ruthless with the junkmail, for example) and have been actually binning stuff and getting it out of the house once it's been designated as rubbish, rather than agonising about finding specialist recycling facilities for every last thing (which tends to mean it just stays in the garage/hall/utility indefinitely - some things have even moved house with us!).
Also, mentally I am moving on in my thinking, and all sorts of things are coming together. Earlier in the spring I finally decided to make a career change - to move from the 'knowledge work' I inevitably drifted into because of being academically able as a child, towards the very practically creative side of me which has being trying to get out ever since. I have decided to leave my job at some point in the next year (exact timings yet to be decided, and partly dependent on other factors) and train as a traditional upholsterer and furniture renovator, setting up my own business in due course (specialising in chairs) alongside the textile art. This is hugely scary, but also feels as if I am finally doing what I should have done years ago - accepting that I am happiest when making things, when being creative, and that I have always been the kind of person who can fix things, do things up, and give them a new lease of life when everyone else has given up on them. Given what makes me tick, making/renovating things which I 'know to be useful or believe to be beautiful' has got to be a more satisfactory way for me to make a living than pursuing nebulous ideas, targets and agendas, with outcomes which are impossible to measure. All this also seems to chime with the zeitgeist of craftsmanship etc which is the subject of so much discussion at the moment - another example of a lot of things seeming to come together just now.
I have also started attending Quaker meetings, which is something I have been trying to pluck up the courage to do for about 8 years. I think all this thinking about simplifying life and paring it down to the essentials has brought me to the point where I can no longer put off exploring Quakerism, with its ethos of living simply. Being amongst people who are accepting of diversity, and whose values and way of life I am increasingly sharing since my mid-life crisis of the past few months, is something I am valuing greatly. In many ways it feels as if I have come home.
On a practical note, my partner has agreed to put 'decluttering dates' in our diaries over the summer to ensure that the shared areas get attended to. We are starting in the garage, on the principle that this will give us space to store the 'recycling' and 'charity shop' bags and boxes temporarily while we are doing the rest of the house! If we are to reach the target of third to a half reduction in 'stuff', then we are going to need a lot of temporary storage...
And the asparagus is coming up! Another week or two and we should be cutting our first crop - yay!
