making room

Two months ago, my friend Anna (the one who just got married re: my previous post) made a huge cross-country move from North Carolina to Oregon (via a few months in New York.) One day, in the middle of all of this, she texted me "LIQUIDATING EVERYTHING: want anything?" I was shocked; Anna had beautiful furniture, art, antiques, dishes, oriental rugs; she had a lovely house, but gave almost all of it away. When I was out in Oregon, she told me she had just purged her closet, too--getting rid of anything old, ratty, too big, with holes or tears and even some things she liked to wear--to make room for her new husband.

When my friends Kristin & Will moved to Asia, they did the exact same thing--getting rid of all sorts of stuff, even stuff they loved--fitting most of their life into a couple of suitcases. And my friends Sarah and Daniel did it when they went to Madagascar (I have a distinct memory of Sarah and I going item-by-item through her closet, making "africa," "storage" and "toss" piles), Laura did it when moving to Uganda, a friend Andrew just facebook posted about getting rid of clothes with/for his new wife yesterday.

I often think it would be ideal to not have as much stuff, but then I get attached to things & mostly to the idea of having a cozy home. (I love being cozy!) Also, I don't want to toss things that I once-upon-a-time spent money on! Still, lately, I've had this sense that I need to make room. It's odd because I don't have someone or something I'm making room for--or at least not immediately (a husband, a new job or international move.) Just the opposite, it seems--I'm living alone in the dead middle of the midwest, exactly halfway through a PhD program. Maybe there will be a man or move in my nearish future (hooray if that happens), but I kind of think this also comes down to making a choice about the sort of person I want to be and become. I guess my blog title--moveable life--fits the bill. I want to always be making space in my life for people & for adventures.

So: today's project has been starting on that. I just got rid of a bunch of old clothes that I don't wear but for some reason kept keeping (sentimental attachment to clothes? sheesh!) and now I'm going to take it a room at a time (which is pretty easy seeing as my house has a grand total of four rooms, zero hallways and one small closet.) I'm hoping that making literal room will also make more space in my head/spirit/life.