Joy Tip: Help Others and Help Yourself

I spent a lot of last weekend doing some belated spring cleaning and de-cluttering. It started with clearing out my closets of all the clothes that are now too big for me, now that I'm down about 78 lbs. Then it progressed to clearing out the livingroom closet of all the odds and ends, old holiday decorations and other stuff I never use, and into the kitchen, where I cleaned out still more stuff. When I was done, I had bagged up five Hefty bags full of stuff to be donated. Fortunately for me, I had just received a flyer from a veteran's organization that does weekly pickups in my area!

In the end, I not only got rid of five trash bags full of clothes I'll never wear and stuff I'll never use, but I helped an organization that could truly use my stuff to help others. Not a bad deal, and it felt great to see those bags disappear!

Here's the joy part - when you get rid of stuff you're no longer using, you're also getting rid of the non-joy feeling you get whenever you look at it and start thinking that you should be doing something with it. Like my collection of craft and scrapbooking magazines that still haunt me, seeing them is a constant reminder that you haven't done anything with them, and probably aren't in the near future, either. Eventually, I'll push myself to donate the craft, scrapbooking and old O Magazine copies that I still have. I keep promising myself I'm going to cut out the articles I want, put them in a binder, and ditch the rest. It's been at least three years now, and I still haven't done it, and the likelihood that I'll get around to doing it anytime within the next year is pretty slim. So, I may just have to take the plunge and purge 'em by donating them to my library or something. Wish me luck!