Trash It or Treasure It

Description

Ah clutter! Aren’t you just the bane of all our lives?

Though Vintage Housekeeping as a way of life is abundant with blessings, one really mustn’t make the mistake of confusing blessings with clutter because there is nothing quite so ugly or draining on the soul as drowning in a sea of all that you imagine might come in useful one day…

You see, I am here to tell you, my Darling, that having a stash of used carrier bags won’t save your life. Starting, but never finishing many a journal before moving on to the next for a “fresh start” won’t keep divorce or disaster from your door. Hoarding clothes that fitted you when you were sixteen won’t mean you will find the incentive to slim back into them before you are sixty and owning thirty three bottles of shampoo won’t turn a bird’s nest into a bouffant.

I’m sorry, but there it is. Life is cruel and cluttering up your brain with all this nonsense isn’t helping a jot.

And so I hereby invite you to join me on the journey to a house where there is room to breath new ideas into your day. A home where you can see the wood for the trees and the kitchen counter for the scrumptious loveliness that is the empty surface!

You see I believe that the creative souls we dream of being are desperately stifled by all the nonsense we surround ourselves with in the name of inspiration. We fail at achieving domestic bliss because we have to navigate our way through so much domestic debris. Clutter spells neglect, neglect spells exhaustion and exhaustion my Darlings, halts creativity and the possibility of owning the kind of home we can be proud of, right there in it’s tracks. We might as well crawl under the duvet with a packet of malted milk and rot…

But no more! No more I say: from today we will go to war, not just on clutter itself but on the ridiculous habits that cultivate it and the muddled old emotions that have us wrapping ourselves up in yet more of this and a whole lot more of that in an effort to avoid all kinds of yukky truths about who we are and the way our lives are shaping up…

“Trash It or Treasure It” is not just a bossy missive on the path to sanity: it is a philosophy for living, for stripping back who we are and what we own until we are left with nothing more than the essence of our most authentic selves, because as Socrates said (and I can confirm): “The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”

And yes I understand that authenticity sounds petrifying and the very thought of tackling the stacks of nonsense you have spent a lifetime building might make you want to cry with pre-emptive tiredness, but you won’t be alone: I am going to be right here, holding your hand, spurring you on and providing pink lemonade and a pep talk whenever the going gets tough.

Make no mistake about it: every SINGLE aspect of your life is being compromised by clutter and something has got to give.