Lightening the Load/Getting Rid of "Stuff"

I am finally on Winter Holiday Break! Wahoo, two weeks of rest and rejuvenation. 

But also, two weeks with space to do some work about the house that I tend to push to the back burner more often than not. 

Bryce and I are dedicated to getting rid of things. Going through, sorting, deciding, and letting go of things we do not need or are hanging on to out of obligation or "shoulds." 

Sometimes it's hard, though. 

In our craft/guest room (that now has a sign on it declaring it my best friend's "place"), we have a recliner. It's quite comfy, but HUGE. Mostly, because it's a recliner, yes, but also a glider. And it was originally bought for our nursery. By my mother-in-law. 

Technically, the nursery was too small for it, so it was in the nook outside the nursery.

Now, it's in a room where it takes up a ton of space, and with the futon taking over the daybed, we don't really need it.

Yep, that's a Jeff Goldblum mermaid sequin pillow. That's signed on the back.

Now that I've taken a picture of it, it doesn't look as abused as I feel it is. You can't see all the places the cats (mostly Lucky) have shredded the piping and the upholstery with tiny threads we keep snipping. I think we could give it to Goodwill (with a good vacuuming). It just holds a lot of emotional weight. 

There are a handful of things, mostly in that room, left over from the nursery. One is the dresser that I use to hold gift wrapping and packing things, and the other is the 6-cube shelf that butts up to the daybed and currently holds mostly my embarrassingly huge puzzle collection. I'm thinking of putting the dresser in the closet to make more space and to move things we don't use that often out of the main space. 

We'd like to put our musical instruments in this room, and figure out how to make it a bit more...cohesive. Maybe I should give a more honest picture of the current chaos (it is also the Wrapping Room currently!): 

It's also where my exercise bike lives, and the Puzzling Table/Wrapping Table that handily drops both leaves.

Good gracious this is a terrible view: dresser, cube, wrapping organizer, craft supplies, puzzles

Music stand, unmanaged detritus... 

See how easy it is to make things look different than reality with camera angles? Ha. 

I did take my violin out recently (I need to get new strings and have it tuned up/inspected). I was happy to learn that I haven't forgotten how to play (although man I have to build up callouses again, my poor fingers!) Bryce has several guitars, and he's more likely to play them if there's a dedicated, uncluttered space. It makes sense to move/get rid of stuff in that room.

This room has literally never been a child's room -- the people who lived here before us were flippers, and the people before that built the house and never had children. This was a craft room then too, but held a giant dollhouse (not creepy at all). It feels different than when we repurposed a room that was meant to house a child.

It will probably feel uplifting to move out some of the repurposed nursery things. But also, we feel a tiny bit of guilt. Even all these years later, to get rid of something someone bought us for a baby that never was feels somehow ungrateful. Logically we know that's not a thing, but emotionally it feels icky. 

Still, getting rid of things we don't use/need and making space for the things that bring us joy is a priority right now. We joke that all our stuff is destined for Goodwill anyway (no kids to inherit), but there is sadness in that. Looking at people who are ahead of us in years, it will be so much easier if we chip away at things before we have to downsize. 

I think we'll reframe this task as a Lightening, rather than a loss. We are making sure that our home suits our purposes and doesn't become a burden of things. We are prioritizing what matters to us and jettisoning the rest.