Despite more than a year’s worth of so-called efforts to downsize my possessions, yesterday I found myself staring at an overcrowded living room and a couch crammed with cardboard boxes full of kitchen wares, random items and laundry baskets of clothing. I’m not even going to begin to describe the state of chaos in the rest of my place.

Besides my own seeming inability to stop bringing things home from consignment shops and other stores, I can also thank my parents and grandmother for my most recent influx of mostly unneeded items.

You see, my grandmother last month moved out of her home of more than 20 years to go live with one of her daughters in California and my parents are downsizing (and I mean DOWNSIZING at a level that I don’t know if I would have the stomach to do) and have moved into an apartment.

As a result, I now have things I didn’t think I’d inherit for years, if not decades and I’m not willing to give them up.

That means, I must get rid of other things.

So….

This weekend and until July I will again begin a serious decluttering/downsizing effort in the house. If I haven’t used it in two years, it must go.  And I’m going to get rid of all things broken or damaged that I’ve been meaning to repair.

Finally, I’m going to bite the bullet on my crochet yarn and get rid of the whole lot (with a grandfather clause for yarn already dedicated to a project).

It will be a weekend of freecycling gone wild.

In July, I’m letting one of my friends who is a ruthless declutterer come in to my home and do the rest. We’ve agreed I get two vetoes and a corner in which I can put a few small boxes of things that I will not give up no matter how irrational it is to keep them.