Traveling Companion

This little lady is coming with me to Santa Fe.  I may be embracing a radically simple life, but that doesn't mean that I'm stripping away all of it's little pleasures.  My dear friend Mary gave me this doll that has "Let Go and Let God" stamped on the front & "Serenity" on the back.  Both are good reminders about what is important to me today, but it does seem ironic that I'm keeping something that actually says "let go" on it.  I love dichotomies though and perhaps she will serve as a talisman and bring me good luck on this journey.

My Radical Moving Sale went well this weekend & I got sold or donated about 75% of my furniture, household items & decor.  I met some great people and several of my friends showed up and bought a few of my favorite things.  It makes me happy to know where some of my stuff ended up.  I did have a few rough moments though with the second truckload of donations to Goodwill.  I felt like I was abandoning old friends and worried that they might get broken or thrown away for a few brief moments.  I'm over it now, but at the time I was feeling a little blue about this part of the process.  Today I feel a little lighter & more excited about all of the new adventures that await me here in Omaha & when I get to Santa Fe (not to mention the road trip itself).

Now I'm focused on selling the rest of the big pieces on Craigslist and will be working on scanning another batch of my Mom's family photos.  Two of my Aunts gave me all of my Grandparent's and Great-Grandparents pictures back in May & I've been slowly but surely getting them all scanned, labeled & shared on a family website.  It's been a labor of love and one of the projects I need to complete before my move.  

Trust GOD, Clean House, Help Others

This pretty much sums up my philosophy on life.  It's a slogan I first heard about 20 years ago and I use it often to help keep me grounded in the present moment. Sometimes it's a mental exercise and other times it's an action packed adventure - just like this new path of mine. 

My understanding of GOD today is simply Good Orderly Direction, which probably isn't surprising for a Professional Organizer.  A positive attitude and simple solutions are almost always the best medicine for whatever ails me.  Lately, I've been saying "I trust you GOD. I trust you GOD." over and over again whenever the voices in my head decide to blast me with fear filled messages about this journey.  Last night was pretty emotional for me after I writing about letting go of my books.   I'm not sure exactly why, because I regularly make room for new books on my shelves, but I was really weepy for a while.

Fortunately, I intuitively knew to pick up the phone today and reason things out with someone else and look for the next right action to take, which usually involves laundry or dishes, to readjust my attitude.   That's not to say I never take time to feel my feelings, I'm just understand that more often than not, those feelings are based on unfounded fears rather than facts.

Learning how to be of service to my friends, family & community also helps me tremendously.  Getting out of myself reminds me that I'm not alone and I always feel better after helping someone whether it's lending a helping hand, an open mind or a friendly sounding board.

Even thinking and writing about it now makes me feel better. So, I guess this is a good place to stop for tonight. 

Goodbye Norma Jean

Today was the first day of my "Radical Moving Sale" and despite the chilly weather we had a pretty good turn out.  I was so happy when a friend from high school bought a little bundle of my Paris memories, which included my Eiffel Tower lamp & a cute little placard from an ice cream shop that I picked up during our high school trip to France.  She & I went to Paris with our French Club after graduation so it's fitting that she chose these mementos.  I'm especially grateful that she took home an antique glass painting commemorating the signing of The Treaty of Versailles that belonged to my Grandmother.

I'm still looking for a buyer for my Marilyn print though & I've been hearing Elton John singing "Goodbye Norma Jean" from Candle in the Wind all day. I'm not having trouble letting this print go and will always have fond memories of buying when I was in college.  I've always loved black and white photography and this was my first venture in buying photography as fine art.  While my love of photography hasn't changed over the years, this process of "unadorning" my life is making me take a good look at who I am today & helping me define who I want to be tomorrow.

It makes me wonder how Marilyn felt when she left Norma Jean behind for her new life in Hollywood, and how I'm going to feel about when I've actually left my life behind here in Omaha and have settled in Santa Fe.  This journey is certainly taking me outside ALL of my comfort zones and since they say, "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone", I'm sure wonderful surprises and amazing adventures await me. 

Today I am especially great-FULL for...

I'm pretty beat after the last 2 days of my Radical Moving Sale and will write more about  that in the next few days.  I only had enough energy to write my daily grat-I-tude list tonight before bed & thought I'd post it here tonight as well.  

I've been typing & sharing a "Baker's Dozen" of grat-I-tude (I type it like this with the hyphens because it reminds me that "I" am centered in gratitude) with a group of friends through email for about 8 or 9 years now.  It has become a daily discipline that always helps me focus on the present moment and the abundance that surrounds me everyday in all areas of my life. 

1.  abundant sunshine

2.  my garage sale is over

3.  two carloads full of all the "little" stuff that didn't sell taken to Goodwill

4.  Devin's help loading the car, taking down the sale signs, hauling trash & arranging the remaining furniture in the garage so we can park in it again

5.  a lady came today because she saw my "Radical Moving Sale" post on Craigslist and wanted to buy a couple of my radical chairs

6.  another friend reminding me that daring to dream & deciding to follow my dream makes it a success

7.  feeling the feelings and putting stuff that didn't sell in the car for donation

8.  several of my friends and one of my client's bought some of my things

9.  enough energy for a quick trip to Whole Foods this evening

10.  knowing I can sell the remainder of my furniture on Craigslist

11.  earmarking some of my sale money for a pedicure tomorrow

12.  becoming more aware of how I spend my money since starting this simplifying process & spending less as a result

13.  ibuprofen

Namaste, Shannon

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.  ~ Melody Beattie

I've Love BIG Books and I Cannot Lie

Books were my best friends as a child.  I loved reading them, falling asleep with them, living vicariously through them, artfully stacking them on tables and arranging them in interesting ways on my bookshelves.  I miss card catalogs and wonder if kids are still taught the Dewey Decimal System in school.

I remember experiencing life on the prairie in A Lantern in Her Hand and wanting to be like Jo in Little Women.  I discovered Kurt Vonnegut as a teenager and feet like I'd been let in on a great cosmic joke after reading Breakfast of Champions.  I became enamored with the dashing rogues and delightful damsels of romance novels in my late teens until I discovered the wonderful world of non-fiction and all of the real life heroes & heroines in the world.  Then I spent a few years scaring myself to sleep with Stephen King's twisted masterpieces.

I moved into the New Age in my 20s and followed Shirley MacClaine & Edgar Cayce around the world and back through time.  Og Mandino, Emmet Fox, Eckhart Tolle & Stephen Covey were the cause of many paradigm shifts in my 30s and then I met Christopher Moore's character Biff, Christ's childhood pal in his novel Lamb.  Talk about a paradigm shift!  I fell in love with this comic romp through ancient times from the very first line, "The angel was cleaning out his closet when the call came." 

When a friend recommended Joan Brady's, God on a Harley, my world changed again.  The very idea of God coming back to give us each our own set of commandments and then taking the time to help the main character clean out her closet made inordinately happy.

I met my soul sister, Sarah Ban Breathnach, a few years ago when I finally got around to reading Simple Abundance.  I was a little busy raising my son in the late 90s when it came out.  I am so grateful I finally picked it up and found much comfort & joy the world she created with her words.


I stumbled upon Robert Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy about 10 years ago and felt much the same way I did when I read Vonnegut for the first time.  I've always been fascinated by the idea of parallel universes and Sawyer's idea of an earth where Neanderthals became the dominant species and then a barrier between the two worlds is breached found me at just the right time in my life.  Around this time, I devoured Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth & World Without End then sobbed my heart out at the soul wrenching twist at the end The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell.

I could go on and on, about how specific books & authors have shaped me and saved me.  For now, this is a lovely walk down memory lane for me and hopefully an inspiration for you to read more books!  It's also a good reminder that even though I had already let go of many of these books before starting this radical downsizing, the power of the stories is always with me.  That reminder makes this process of letting go of most of my books much easier today.

The books I'm keeping (for now).

As much as I love books, I never amassed a large collection.  I regularly donate or give my books away when I'm done with them.  I always suggest to my clients to use their bookshelves as parameters and if they start to overflow then it's time to edit their collections.  As a result, I don't have a lot of books to put in my sale, but those that I'm letting go of are meaningful to me.  The ones I'm keeping are dog eared and highlighted and books that will read and reference over & over again throughout my life.


I am grateful for my Kindle and it will definitely come in handy during this minimalism part of my journey.  However, I still hold the dream of having a a home with a room dedicated to books.  For today, I'll rely on the library card and digital downloads.

Imagine No Possesions

I've been hearing John Lennon's "Imagine" in my head for the last few days.  I always loved that song and the video, especially the way Yoko Ono smiles at him at the end.  That smile seemed to show that love was their most valuable possession.

As for me, I spent most of my life imagining more possessions - more furniture, more art, more square footage to house it all.  I collected Architectural Digest magazines for several years and even hauled 3 boxes of those suckers around for several moves in my early 20s.  I imagined my house on those pages. 

Now, instead of decorating my life, I'm undecorating it.  My pictures & artwork have all been removed from my walls and have colorful stickers on them for the garage sale.  I feel an incredible sense of freedom at this time and the possibilities seem wide open now.  Less definitely seems like more today.

I did have to take a little break today though from getting my stuff ready for the sale.  I had a bit of an emotional hangover this morning from all the feelings & memories this process is bringing up.  I'm sure part of that resulted from spending some time last night cleaning up my Grandmother's old console radio.  I had a flashbacks of dusting its wooden scrolls as a child.  Less stuff means less stuff to dust though and I won't miss dusting all those nooks and crannies.

I'm beginning to realize how much space my stuff has taken up in my head.  Getting it all moved into the garage seems to have helped me detach from it.  I once read that "everything in every drawer takes up space in our heads".  Now that I only have a few drawers with very few things in them, there seems to be space for new thoughts and dreams now and I'm excited about those possibilities.

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

Today I had a lot of help from from my son & a friend's son moving most of my furniture and household goods upstairs to the garage.  Between the 2 of them they had it all done in about 30 minutes.  I had spent the last couple of weeks getting it all organized and boxed up so it could just be picked up and moved upstairs, but they 20-something muscles and stamina made quick work of it all (and they were probably both hung over too!).

Now I get to spend the next few days organizing & pricing everything.  I'm also doing some research on a couple of the items that belonged to my Grandparents - an antique steamer trunk & vintage console radio.  I found a sticker inside the radio with the model number so that makes the process much easier & I was able to find out how much it's worth today and can do some pre-sale advertising on Craigslist to see if I can sell it in the next few days.

 
The busy work of getting ready for the sale seems to be helping me process some of the emotions that are coming up with releasing all of these things.  Most of it is really easy and I'm happy to see it go, especially since a couple of my friends already did some shopping so I know those things went to good homes. 

Cleaning up my Grandparent's things and researching there value made me feel closer to them today and I know that they would be happy know the value of their former belongings and proud of me for taking this journey.