Less is more - day 1

Today is the first day of my 30-Day Minimalism Challenge (which is serving as the theme of my NaBloPoMo 2019 challenge).    My first choice for what leaves my house may seem like an odd one - not because of what it is, but because of how I've quantified it.  My first object is one bag of around 30 t-shirts. 

Why would I be getting rid of 30 items on the first day?  Why wouldn't I save this for later in the month when I might find myself struggling to find 20+ things a day to get rid of?

Believe me, I mulled over those questions.   And I wrestled down the fear that if I started out this bold, I might regret it later in the month.  

In the end, though, I realized this was a perfect first post.  You see, today's choice is a sort of metaphor for this month-long experiment.

This first post is (probably) going to be the longest post of this challenge, so bear with me.  With this post, and with today's choice, it seems appropriate to explain that this challenge isn't just about getting rid of stuff - or even minimizing, per se.    It's about making decisions.  It will be a month full of making decisions about things I'm going to let go of, things I'm going to keep.  Hopefully, it will result in some clarity about how what I own should reflect my life - what I want out of  life, and what I want life to be about in this stage.  

In pulling items out of my "yarn room" for painting this week, I came across a bag of t-shirts that I've been storing for making t-shirt yarn.  At one point I had collected a LOT of t-shirts that were perfect candidates for this.  No seams, little amounts of print, not stained, minimal holes...   This was a curated collection.  😏  Which was why it has been hard to get rid of it all after collecting for a few years.  

The thing is, I tried my hand at making t-shirt yarn and I have to say it isn't the most pleasant thing to make (for me, anyway).  It was kind of laborious and messy to cut the fabric just right to make one long strip, and then pull that long strip taut in order to curl the material up into something that resembled yarn.   I think whoever figured out how to do this with an actual t-shirt is something of a genius, but this is the result of one (probably large t-shirt) yarn-making exercise:

It's not very impressive, is it?  I had no idea how long it would take, and how many t-shirts it would take to actually make enough "yarn" to make something with.  And other than maybe a bath mat, what truly did I think I'd want to have that is made with t-shirt yarn?!?

But I'd collected all those t-shirts.  So I hung onto them. 

Today, I'm setting myself free from the t-shirts.  I probably turned 10 t-shirts into nice rags - so I originally had more than what's in the bag above.  

But what is left are all nice enough that someone else may want to wear them.  Today I send them out into the world to cover others' backs.  Some have clever prints and may make their new owners smile.  Or maybe someone with more energy and time left in their life will snap them up at the thrift store -recognizing that they'd make great t-shirt yarn.  

They have my heartfelt blessings.   😊