Bag Lady leanings.

I have a bad, bad habit.  It’s a bad, bag habit.

I have recently been in a crazy, purge everything phase.  My garage looked like something out of hoarders.  My laundry room was virtually unnavigable.  And I seem to be tripping on stuff everywhere I walk – we have waaaay too many toys, and many are ones we’ve outgrown, but momma is too sad to put things away for good.  sniff.

However – there will be 13 people sleeping in my house over Christmas.  13 people who will be tripping over all those toys, and trying to find a quiet spot to catch a breath.  And oh yeah- the tree will be up.  So we really need the room.

So purge I have done – mostly it’s been fun, and therapeutic.  I have found lots of nostalgic things – notes from our wedding, baby pictures of the kids I thought I had lost, my introductory paperwork for semester at sea.  I found seven pairs of scissors I feared were lost forever.  And I threw away or donated vanload after vanload of junk, or stuff that was weighing us down.

I started to notice a trend in my behavior that has heretofore gone unnoticed, or more likely, banished to my subconscious – I like to stick stuff in a bag and forget it. Leftovers from the 1st  grade valentine’s day party project?  Stuffed and left.  Backup supplies from our trip to the beach/the farm/the zoo?  Stuffed and left. I threw away what felt like thousands of half-eaten baggies of fishies.  Recovered countless cans of sunblock. Found enough half-used cups of animal food from Davis farmland to keep a cow happy all winter. 

It’s symptomatic of two of my great struggles.  One –  I hold onto things because I plan to be organized- “I’ll keep this for next time” I think to myself, when in reality, I can’t close the deal. I envision myself pulling out just the right thing to save money/time/an extra trip, when the reality is that it sits in a bag in my car until it gets tossed into a pile of bags in the garage, never to be looked at again.  Two – I can’t finish things.  I love to be the mom who brings a project to class.  I love to be the lady who makes homemade blankets and christmas stockings and quilts for the preschool auction.  The reality?  I grab the stuff, do the project – but then never clean up – the remnants end up sitting in a bag, shoved in a bin- never sorted back out and returned so I can use the components for another project. (hence the seven pairs of missing scissors)

Perhaps this week has been more than purging of things.  Maybe I can purge a bad behavior, as well.  And now, I have literally fifty now-empty reusable totes and bags that I can use for groceries. And not to hide my shortcomings.