Making Space - week 3

 

Week Three!  Yippee!

Spending just a little more time in the bedroom (and master bath), I pulled together just a few items this week.

But first a bit of a back story:

Many years ago when we were house-hunting, at one house I opened a linen closet and it was so completely full of disheveled sheets and towels I'm not sure what kept them from toppling out.   

Never mind being surprised that the sellers didn't think to remove some of the linens and neaten it up (if only for the sake of making the closet look more spacious), I still remember feeling kind of badly for these people at how frustrating it must have been to rummage through that mess of linens just to make a bed, or find a clean towel. And that when they did find what they were looking for, it would be wrinkled and no longer fresh looking.  For the record, we have lived in our current home for 22 years - so this memory is at least that long ago.  Which goes to show, I'm thinking, the degree to which the impression of this closet was made on me. While we've never had such a fully-stuffed linen closet, I decided right then and there we did not need nearly the number of sheets that we ourselves owned.

A related thing is that at some point (I don't remember when) I developed the habit of stripping the beds, washing and drying the sheets and pillow cases, and putting them right back on the beds.  Whether this habit made easier my decision to whittle down our sheets, or my whittling down sheets made developing this habit easier, the fact is these two things fit hand-in-glove with each other.

At some point in the raising of three boys and having four beds to regularly launder linens for, my idea of a necessary minimum number of sheets became to have one sheet set per bed, plus one extra set for each of the different sizes of beds we owned.  The only reason I kept an extra set of sheets per bed size was in case someone became sick in the night and a quick sheet change needed to happen.  And yes, I've been thankful that on several occasions I was able to instantly pull out a clean set of sheets and quickly remake a bed for a sleepy, ill child.  

Anyway, the years passed, and each son took his bed (and sheets) with him when he moved out.  We've been down to just one queen-sized bed for a couple of years now and I must have forgotten my rule at some point because somehow I've managed to amass quite a few more sheets than I ever intended to.  I got rid of some in the October minimalism challenge, but it's time to get rid of the rest of the superfluous sheets.  

I know what's pictured above doesn't look like much compared to the length of the back story, but it is this week's "declutter".  There's actually a bed skirt and two mis-matched sheets above.  The pillows have been on our bed for years.  They're a bit flat and really... no longer attractive, so out they go - finally.   The brushes and combs never got used (except for maybe once) because they don't work well with my hair, and the hairdryer parts don't fit on my current hairdryer (let alone that I never used them with the hair dryer they came with - however long ago that was), and then there's a small plastic box with too-small-sized compartments that are just fiddly to me.  

This next part is a last-minute (but important) edit:  

To be completely honest, when I first wrote this post, I wrote an admission that I was hanging onto to three sheet sets - one still new in the package that I brought home from MIL's this summer.  But today it came clear to me that I will be happier rehoming those brand new sheets.  And here's why:

It's a sheet set identical to one we had many years ago (I'm sure, given to us by MIL) and looking at it, I know I'm not going to really like them (neither the pattern, nor the feel of the sheets).  Truthfully, it's probably a more expensive sheet set than I will buy when we need new ones as I much prefer a coarser sheet that is crisp when new - so someone else will (hopefully) be extremely glad to find this set at the thrift store. 

I so appreciate how this exercise causes me to look honestly at things I'm hanging onto for no good reason, or for reasons that don't respect where I am in life, or what I know to be true about me and what I like or need.

So, for week three of my Making Space challenge, my running total of items outa here is:

Making Space:  67 items gone

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If you'd like to join in a low-key decluttering activity that fits with the pace of life, see my post explaining this Making Space endeavor.  Check out the bottom of same link for graphics you can feel free to use.