Simplify, Simplify

I am still working on getting rid of things I do not need or want at this point in my life. I've been making decent progress in some areas and have come across stumbling blocks in others.

I've been getting rid of things from previous relationships that I just don't need to hold onto anymore. I have the memories. I don't need things to remind me of the good ones, and I'd rather not have the things that remind me of the bad ones.

Two things I have not been able to get rid of so far are my journals dating back nearly twenty years and my wedding photos.

Most of the things in the older journals are not even worth reading now -- a single line about how much I like my eleventh-grade crush -- come on. I just can't bring myself to toss them though, just in case. So they're still in the back of my closet under the rag doll my mother made that looked like me at the time.

As for the wedding photos, I've been divorced for six-and-a-half years. I only hear from that ex when he wants something from me and I have no contact at all with his family. But I can't get rid of the photos. When I was going through old photos yesterday, I pulled a bunch of wedding photos of myself and my family and stuck them into the newly available spaces in my regular photo albums. They are pictures of people who have passed on and of people who were happier then than they are now (even if it wasn't necessarily about the wedding), which covers the entire family at this point. It was nice to see my parents and youngest sister particularly looking happy and healthy and young. I wish I had a magic wand that could take what was captured in those photos and give it back to them now, when they need it so much. All of the other photos are back in the top of my closet until I look at them next and decide what to do with them.

I want to keep plugging away at this purge I have started until I have only a handful of things, at most, that I have to question keeping. I want the rest to be only things I want, use, and enjoy.

On a tidying note, I got my kitchen looking so nice last night that when I finished breakfast this morning I actually washed the dishes by hand and put them away so it would stay that way. If only I could get to that point with the rest of the house. I think I have a date with a triple-loader on Thursday.

Don't you wish your life could be as enriching as mine?