Yea the heck with that!

There used to be(still is for all I know) a guy many miles up a dirt road near Boulder, CO who signed up for everything, especially catalogs ...made his own pressed logs and heated his house

@Buttercup Resourceful - excellent.

I was grinning as I read this, until I got to "and a new kayak." Then I guffawed out loud. Also, say alas a lot. It's a great word.

@Redcupcoffee I'm planning to do this in about a year. I recently lost thousands of books due to storage garage prices being out of my budget, and thought I'd die. Know what? I didn't. Also, Kindle and Audible give me all the reading material I could ever want. The only thing is, I have recently taken up painting. I guess I will make sure my vehicle has room for painting supplies. And I will learn to do that thing where you have 10 paints and can make any color.

@Redcupcoffee This is who I want to be. But who I am is, I'd rather do a million other things than clean. What I WANT is a cleaning lady. Or, to make it interesting, a young, buff cleaning man. mwahaha

@Jenmcjen I followed the advice of the famous Marie Kondo book, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing."

She said to go through the house and gather all the objects that are same, and put them in separate piles in one place..a pile of all your shoes, all your pairs of your scissors, etc.

Then select one or two identical items from each pile to keep, and put the rest in donation boxes.

When you want to keep multiple items, such as shoes, choose a few from each shoe genre by picking up each pair of shoes.If you feel a burst of joy, keep it. If nothing happens, then, no matter how much you paid for it, or who gave them to you, put them in in the Goodwill box.

The idea is that the items will be happier if they have a new, useful life, and you don't want to deprive them.

It may take a while to cover the entire house but when you're done the house will be echoing, clean, and easy to maintain. Furthermore, the process has taught you to listen to your inner voice instead of just buying and keeping whatever you see, without finding out if it truly brings you joy.

My daughter did that with me two years ago and I donated more stuff than I thought I even owned, but my house only looked much better, not empty. Now, if something no longer makes me happy, I no longer wait..I just donate it now.

@birdingnut This is brilliant.

@Redcupcoffee Yup..

@Redcupcoffee Would that they were all as self deprecating as 'doormats'. Many subtly build fantasies about you and how you are expected to become the completion. When you don't live up to those fantasies, a doormat is what they'd make of you. It goes that way for males or females looking for that missing puzzle piece.

Guh! So true!!!!! I cringe when people are like that. Like, no, thank you. I do not need the responsibility for YOUR life now that I finally got my kid all grown and gone.

@Redcupcoffee essentially. Anything that you pay entirely too much for just for a brand name. Things you don't really need but want to improve your appearance monetarily.