365 things

Oy, I haven't posted in more than a month. It's not that I don't have things to blog about: We recently had our annual Cinco de Mayo party, my uncle's doing our landscaping right now, we're getting our roof replaced, we're planning to partially redo the kitchen, and so on.

But instead of blogging about any of those things, I'm going to blog about this iron:

Thing 1

I've had this iron for many years. I don't remember exactly when I got it, but I believe it pre-dates me and Chris' itemhood, meaning that I've had it for at least 8 years.

But I haven't used it in quite a while. This used to be our back-up iron — we had another iron we liked more, but kept this one around just in case. But about a year ago, we got a new, fancy Rowenta number. It's like the Cadillac of irons. And as a result, this iron became our back-up, back-up. So, should our all-mighty Rowenta fail us, we have another iron. And if that one should fail, we have this fella.

That's a lot of ironing insurance for people who iron, oh, maybe once a month.

Which is why this iron is being sacrificed for my newest blogging project — a project I'm sure to get all gung-ho about for a week or so, and then abandon, as I'm wont to do.

I recently read an article in Body + Soul about de-cluttering — something I'm so desperate to do. Chris and I have a problem with clutter. When an English major/lawyer and journalist get married, it's inevitable. Identical copies of British literature. Every copy of Esquire from the past four years. All my newspaper and magazine clips. Old reporter's notebooks. Volumes and volumes of law books. And these are just the things I can see. Right now. From my computer.

Add to that all the things not currently in my line of sight. And then add all the clutter a 7-month-old accumulates. I'm amazed we don't have a show on TLC.

I've managed to organize, file and store things in a somewhat neat way, so to the untrained eye, we don't look like hoarders. But I still know it's there — useless crap taking up precious space in my house.

Anyway, in this article, the author talks about how she decided to tackle her own clutter problem by getting rid of one thing every day for a year. She called it 365 in 365. I instantly fell in love, and promptly decided not only to steal her idea, but to blog about it as well.

Which brings me back to this dear, old iron. This iron is going to go live in a box in the basement with some other things I had already decided to purge. I'm going to keep adding to the box every day. Then, later this summer, we're going to have a yard sale, and whatever clutter doesn't sell immediately goes to good will. And after that? The clutter collection shall continue, until I hit the one year mark, or I run out of stuff to get rid of, or I forget about the whole thing and start some other ridiculous project.