My family is preparing to move out of our house and into a new space. This requires, as you are most likely familiar, a sifting through some many number of years of purchases, piles and files, corners and drawers, bins and boxes. It’s an odd exercise, I am finding, but has its satisfying moments. Bags of trash leaving the house, sentimentality confronted, discernment – save this card from Grandma or this one, or both? And, why? We will be living in our new home for up to a year and keeping other things in storage, so there is this question of what do I need in the near term, and what can I live without? But as I pack up two different categories of boxes, I wonder: why would I need to save what I won’t need for a whole year?
Periodically I will go through rooms and shelves and tackle the household junk drawer, and so I am surprised (but why really?) to find that I have so many things that I don’t use anymore, or things that have broken and I’ve put aside to fix, or pictures I’ve kept for later inspiration. When does one accept that what used to be a daily habit – e.g. making art – is now history, and that the room devoted to this hobby, this once passion, is a tomb, dusty and gunked up with old energy?
I have been thinking about Amends, it is month 10, and Step 10 in 12-step tradition is about keeping your house clean, the proverbial house that is, e.g. continual reflection on shortcomings, relational snags, and cleaning them up aptly. Again, surprisingly, I am seeing how I am at the top of my own list. I am least forgiving of myself, and I take much less care of my things than I do of say my daughter’s, or the kitchen or the main parts of our house. Where I have stored up my stuff, my passions, is left to catch dead flies.
So in my commitment to keep my house clean, literally, and to slowly sort and pack, I have re-discovered what I love and honored it. I have created a special box for collage materials to take to our temporary home. I have dusted off books and portfolios and reminded myself of what I care about. Tucked some away for future projects and put others in a give-away pile. I am not hoarding, I am honoring. I am an artist and I want to support this reality about myself, even during this new mom/young family sabbatical from a part of my identity. I also re-discovered that what used to inspire me – the colors, shapes, washes and intersection of lines and shadows – still does. I could add to that folder current eye-catchers and resources, but for now I can celebrate that is something consistent about me.
I have been left wondering why I waited to reflect, to confront the thick dirt on my stuff, the stagnant stuffed shelves of my former life. We are planning a move that needs attending, but I could have just thrown it all away or packed it up, thrown it in storage, continued to not look. I am grateful I looked and discovered and re-discovered. And like the wisdom of continual reflection and making amends, I am drawn to the practice of “cleaning up” and handling things as they arrive, to give them the time and space they deserve, or to pass them on to someone who can. This is a declaration and practice of sufficiency.
More on Why Wait next week.