The World (Is Going Up In Flames) [Part 3]

Song of the day: How Long - Charles Bradley 
"How long must I keep going on?"

There's something to be said about being ruthless when sorting. It's something I used to be terrible at, but the many occasions over the last year or two that my mother has asked me to clear some space in my bedroom in my parents' house so they can use it has taught me a thing or two. For example, over Christmas I decided (mum decided I was) to sort out my chest of drawers. Four large drawers, four small. Last time I sorted through it I got rid of a fair few items, so that instead of all the drawers being ready to burst, they were only semi-filled.

This time however, I was taking no prisoners. Whereas last time a few things got though the decision making process by the age old 'I might wear it one day', I was having none of that this time. After an hour or two, we were down to the following:

One drawer containing memory clothing, e.g. primary school dresses with everyone's signatures on, orchestra tour t-shirts for China and Prague.
Three boxes of jewellery, health+beauty products and other memorabilia (e.g. dance and gymnastic medals) that I just couldn't get rid of. These boxes fit into the same drawer as the above.

And I think that was it! Eight drawers down to one.

Something that helps you to be ruthless is moving the items you don't want to keep out of your room/ house as soon as possible. Last time I sorted through my clothes here in London was several months ago, but I put the clothes to-go in a pile that stayed here until this weekend. Clearing up on Saturday, however, involved me very quickly saying "yes" or "no" to items (think twice about your decision on the former, but only once about the latter), and then immediately going out to Oxfam with my bag of donations. The only textile items I have left that need to go are a bag of holey old socks, because I wasn't sure how best to get rid of them.

Day 3: 5pm, still sorting.

Being ruthless can be hard though. As you can see in the above photo, today I was sorting out my shoe collection. I owned about sixteen pairs, which I culled down to eleven today. Out of those eleven, I wear two, perhaps three on a regular occasion. Most of the eleven are heels that go with specific outfits that I wear only occasionally but don't want to get rid of yet. I don't mind about keeping them. What was hard was throwing away some of the shoes that have served me faithfully over the years but are far past it now. A pair of brown high-heeled boots that I wore almost every day last year, a pair of walking boots that I've owned for about five years and got me through the worst of work when I started but have just become too un-waterproof for me to continue using them, and a pair of black court shoes that I've had since I was in my last years in secondary school. I really like them, but I've worn them so much the heel has worn down to the point where it's dangerous to use them. They had to go. It's always hard to get rid of things that have seen you through a lot. You often don't realise you have an emotional attachment to something (why would you? It's a pair of shoes!) until you have to let it go. But it's necessary.

We've made good progress though. The room is looking much, much better than it did a few days ago, and it's making me feel better. It looks more home-y, I'm more able to find things, and it's generally just a nice room to be in! Actually getting the TV to work rather than using it as a noticeboard was a benefit I had no idea would be so great. I get to watch Harvey Specter on a screen easily three times bigger than my laptop screen. It's becoming more of a thing with every passing episode. If only I could get White Collar and Teen Wolf on there as well, I'd be a puddle of goo on the floor, and mess up all my efforts this weekend. Maybe it's a good thing we're limited to just this one show for the moment.

So what have we actually done? May I present...

Formerly-problem-area #1. It's not perfect as the dryer was commandeered before I could finish drying my duvet cover, but we're down to just reading material! And to prove that it's not all just been moved to the couch,

Ta-daa! Nothing there except for reading material either. And finally,

Formerly-problem-area #4. All nice and neat, and providing room for me to type this up in comfort, rather than hunched over a laptop sitting on a not-so-comfortable couch.

So there we have it. The room is almost complete. All that is left is the ever-looming problem area #3, which may have actually ever so slightly increased in size. But whilst I've not yet completed all that I set out to do, I have learnt something about deadlines and projects. I need to make sure my goals are realistic for the time that I have, and I probably need to procrastinate less. I have no doubt that I would have got everything finished today had I a) done something yesterday and b) not spent most all of this morning reading fanfiction and playing on empire building browser games. These projects take time, but they are doable. And they're really not as daunting as they first seem.

And tomorrow I'm going to kick problem area #3's behind.