January 2017 begins the slide into my 50th birthday. The start of the 12 month countdown to an age that I am rather excited about if you want to know the truth. I have felt 50 for a while now and for a short time last year I even thought I was almost there ( really how can a person be wrong about how old they are?) but this time it is for real. So really it seems as good a time as any to finally be getting my shit together. I could call it “stuff” ala the old George Carlin routine but the truth is that if I have not used it enough to even know what I have then my stuff is just shit, but the good part is that my shit might be stuff to someone else so donating it is an excellent way to take my quality excess and make it a joyful bounty for someone else.
This of course is where things get tricky and we start playing mind games with ourselves, or at least I do. I mean this is not my first rodeo but this one has been a few years coming. Having the store and having it be such an amazing success meant that I just about abandoned my home and the poor thing suffered in my wake I can tell you that. So here I am 3.5 years later digging out and learning a lot of lessons along the way. These lessons are preparing me to take on my sewing studio but before getting there, I needed to get a grip on what my goal was and oddly enough I learned it from my bedroom dressing table.
While people who follow the the FLY-Lady know that keeping a clean sink is the start of a cascading habit of getting your life together my “shiny-sink” was my bedroom dressing table. and while I don’t have a before photo this is the after and by after I mean I have been easily been able to keep it this way for 6 months and have no worry that anything about that will change.
Now, had you seen it before you would have noticed three zipper cases of makeup, 5 years of hair products ( oh for the right one!), multiple brushes, lotions, potions and lots of makeup dust.
The thing is, after a personal “come to Jesus” with myself the truth was there was very little of it all that I was using on a daily basis. But the idea of not having the option of 9 different lipsticks, 12 eyeshadows and heaven knows how many lotions made me a bit twitchy at first… after all I had paid good money for this stuff.
But the truth was that each day I wear the same thing, black/brown eyeliner, mascara, a bit of creme blush and on a rough day some under eye concealer…that is it. Every bit of it now fits in a small box that has belonged to my father but previously was living buried in a drawer never seen. That box now lives in that center drawer. In the left side drawer I keep the items I need for my hair and nothing more, in the right perfume and deodorant.
My goal was that everything had to fit in my dressing table with ease and to make the cut I must use it at least 1x a month. I have also taken to making sure what I buy is of the highest quality I can afford with the idea that whatever I am getting should last at least 10 years (not makeup of course!). A paradigm shift for sure but one I am totally enjoying so far!
I have come to understand that I like many have ~Goldfish Syndrome~ As a species we are growing and gathering items into our lives to fill the size of our own personal bowls (houses)… and when it starts getting tight in our bowl, we just buy a bigger bowl and we grow some more! Nowhere is this more evident than at my local hardware superstore. Their current big display is of any size storage container that you could ever want, when what we really need to do is be minimizing not organizing our chaos, or at least that is my plan.
I am working on the kitchen now and soon it will be time to tackle my sewing room { insert ominous music}. I will be taking you along for that adventure, the good, the bad and the ugly will be seen. Are you ready?
Do you have Goldfish Syndrome and if so what are you doing about it?
