Seemed like a good excuse to post this poem from Shel Silverstein. Especially since it deals with clutter. Fortunately I don't have so much Halloween stuff around. A few decorations that I put up and take down, usually in the office. They stay stored in a relatively small place until the next year.
I DID however end up with a bunch of Halloween junk in the trunk of my car several years back. We had a ton of Halloween decorations in the office, and I mean pretty well-made stuff like wooden and light-up signs. It certainly wasn't your cheap cardboard skeleton cut-out. If I remember correctly, they ended up in somebody's cubical, and the original owner was gone. So it eventually it came down to either taking them or throwing them out.
Well, being ever the packrat, I didn't want to see these perfectly good things go to waste, so I ended up taking a few of them. I forgot who I finally ended up with the big wooden witch and cauldron (complete with embedded lights), but I was carrying it in the trunk of my car for a while until I finally gave it to somebody who I knew would like it.
Looking back at the anti-clutter progress I've had over the last 12 months, I think I've certainly gotten better with avoiding the collection of more junk in the first place. I've been to thrift stores, flea markets, and places I usually spree at like book stores, and I have been able to fight the compulsive buying forces in my head. I've been able to say "No, I really DON'T need this. And I don't have room for it. And I have other similar things already that I'm not using." Fighting that is half of the problem, because as I've said many times before: moving into a bigger place is no solution when you have the compulsion to buy more stuff to fill it up.
By the way, Shel Silverstein did a lot of great adult cartoons and poems too. Check out his book Different Dances.
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