I've Been Sprayed with Exhausto

That's what we say when we're really, really tired - "I've been sprayed with Exhausto."  I woke up this morning and was burning to clean, fixated on organizing, yearning to throw something - a lot of somethings - out.  I am rarely in these moods, and my overstuffed house is evidence of this, so I got right on it and attacked the dreaded "storage room."

Our house is two storeys, plus the garage story.  You can tell a narrow den was added on later and, underneath, they "extended" the garage with a bonus storage room, ducts and pipes all exposed in the ceiling, an add-on miniature window.  At some point in the 70's or early 80's, we've been told, a band lived here, and we can only surmise it was they who painted the whole thing black, with strange hieroglyphic-like trippy symbols in fluorescent paint on the back of the door and in random places in the room.  It was some sort of fry room, we suppose.

The whole thing being black and the window so small, it's perpetually gloomy in there, although we have, at various times, cleaned it up and allowed someone down on their luck to stay for a month or two.  Now, it houses my fabric stash and yarn bundles and those musical instruments and computer parts that seem to just build up in our house.  The Christmas decorations and camping gear.  You know this room.

It was time, today, to clean it out.  I removed most of the boxes, threw away a ton of trash, put a few things up on Craigslist, found some books to sell and some clothes to donate and swept the floor.  I even smudged with my homemade sage stick (sage from the garden!) as a final clearing step.

And boy, do I feel better.  But boy, am I tired.  Still, one needs to do these sorts of actions every so often, just to remind your possessions who is really boss.  And maybe, just maybe, you can get a few bucks for that 70's three-quarter size Fender Musicmaster bass guitar someone gave you when you were fourteen.  The great circle of life is reflected in the way our possessions circulate around the neighborhood, the country, even the globe.  It's both disturbing and enchanting. At any rate, some things of mine have left the house today, and more will leave in this coming week.  It was nice to know them, but as can happen with things you love, sometimes you just have to move on.