August 2025 Purging Momentum Restored

In my last purging update, I bemoaned my loss of minimizing mojo. The complications of our summer made concentration and purpose falter. May was a complete bust with not a second spent on purging. June only netted 2 hours of purging time (finally getting rid of old medals and trophies I won for music competitions back in my teen years). At the beginning of July, I knew something had to change. I decided to attack the problem earlier in the day. As soon as I completed my morning devotional time, I set out to spend at least 20 minutes in purging. Often, I ended up working longer. I guess that principle is correct, "Eat the frog." Here's a brief video, if you've never encountered that helpful productivity phrase.

I'm not sure what triggered my hoarding tendencies. In my family-of-origin, we moved frequently. My parents were Salvation Army officers and we moved every 2-3 years. Our orders arrived one month before the move. Thus, we usually moved unopened boxes from the previous move. Unable to find what we knew we had in the boxes, we often made duplicate purchases. The boxes grew and grew. For a family of seven, such multiplication was downright dangerous.

I also suffer from a scarcity mentality. It is second nature to worry if we will have enough. If something goes on sale, I feel compelled to buy it so we will have it when we might not have enough to cover that purchase later. My frugality plays in here, as well. If I think I'm saving, I'm more likely to buy and accumulate more than we need. I don't want to throw things out because I might need them at some point in the future.

I am only now beginning to recognize some of this as a sickness. In July, I focused efforts on whittling down my accumulation of craft supplies. Boy, did I like crafts! Now you should ask, "so, you're crafty?" Well, no, not really. In truth, the crafts I have completed are often pathetic. Early in our marriage, I used to give homemade gifts. It got to the point where I apologized, realizing it wasn't truly a gift if the thing looked like a two-year-old threw it together from pipe-cleaners and tissue paper. 

The only thing I really enjoyed and excelled at was cross-stitching. Even with that, I can only think of two cross-stitch gifts I gave that were appreciated. In college, I made a very basic (i.e, ugly... without color or appeal), framed cross-stitching of a verse from an Amy Grant song about "my precious family" being "more than an heirloom to me." My mother loved it and proudly displayed it. Then, I bought a kit for making a cross-stitch clock and gave that to my mother-in-law. Although I don't think she loved it, she did display it for many years in her kitchen.

I spent many hours purging my crafts supplies. Some of these were inherited supplies. My grandmother's sister made and sold crafts. Thus, upon her death, I was bequeathed loads of frames and mats. I don't think I ever used one. Here are four separate lots of supplies I had hoped to sell to some other crazed craft hoarder (Few must struggle as I do; I'm having no success at selling these supplies):

It was somewhat nostalgic to come across the crafts I made with my special education basic life skills classes. We made a variety of plastic canvas Christmas ornaments and fridge magnets. (Sadly, I sent the sparkly snowflake ornament and the balloon photo frame samples to Goodwill before I snapped the photo of our projects). We also used plastic canvas to sew a set of mug rugs. Another easy craft was a necklace made from bandanas, cotton balls, and beads. School colors were a big hit. I doubted anyone would bite at old-fashioned plastic canvas patterns, materials, or yarn. Those went to Goodwill.

Several of the crafts supplies (pipe-cleaners, bells, googly eyes, felt, fabric scraps, etc.) went to my local grade school. I think the teachers appreciated the donation (craft supplies, recess toys, games, puppets, and over 100 books, including a set of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series since we had two, the Origami Yoda series, and a variety of classic and vintage books):

In July, I purged on 84% of the days for a total of 12 hours. Besides the donation to the school, I worked on some bookshelves downstairs (oh, we have oodles of bookshelves and tons of books - this is a very hard category for me to purge from). I managed to cull almost 200 books. Parting with books is often like cutting off a digit. I still have half the downstairs bookshelf area to get to. 

I also spent a fair amount of time going through piles of magazines. When I taught high school, I often gave creative assignments asking the students to use magazine pictures to illustrate lines from literature (for example, one group found an image of a woman horrified to see her dog trailing in muddy steps on the carpet and paired that with Shakespeare's line, "Out d@mn spot!"). I probably should have merely thrown the stacks away, but instead skimmed through for ideas or recipes I might want to keep. 

In August, we also attempted to sort things in Sean's room. I think we sent 2 or 3 piles of clothes to Goodwill. Once football was over, Sean dropped a lot of weight and many items no longer fit. We attempted to donate some football gear (some even new with tags), but the high school athletic office never got back to me. Thus, in August, I purged on 20 days (66% of the days) for a total of 15 hours. While I do feel I'm making better progress now, I'm amazed at how much I still need to do. Thankfully, we do not plan to move until later in 2026, so hopefully my purging progress will persist. In the meantime, let me know if you're a crafter in search of hoarded supplies. Ha!