Moving, day twelve

I have entirely too much stuff. Does anyone want some of my stuff? My husband and I had what essentially amounts to three households of stuff: mine, Colin's, and his. I have only recently begun getting rid of Colin's stuff, and I'm still getting rid of stuff. Jeff has been the model husband lately, getting up early and doing unpleasant stuff like loading his truck up and making runs to the city dump and local donation spots at 5am. I totally don't have the disposition for that, so I am grateful to him for taking care of these things.

I have been playing around with a new idea for ways to keep 'keepsake' or special items without actually keeping the item. I take a photograph of the thing, then get rid of the thing. The photo then goes in my keepsake box. I have considered making a sort of scrapbook of the photos, writing the memory down that goes with the photograph. That way, I still have an image of the special thing but don't have something sitting around collecting dust and taking up space. I am really frustrated with looking at an item and saying, "oh, but I couldn't possibly get rid of this thing, my first ever blah blah thing that I've had for a hundred years", and so on. When I think of the utter uselessness of some of my stuff, it is much easier for me to discard the bits of my life.

One of the biggest problems I have always had is cleaning around all my stuff. As I'm sure I've mentioned, I am awful at the cleaning. The more stuff I have, the dirtier it all gets. Today I bought a vacuum cleaner. Sexiest vacuum cleaner ever. I have been wanting a new vacuum since I was eighteen years old and was regularly pulling my arm out of its socket by pushing around Colin's 1960s monstrosity of a vacuum cleaner that was probably designed by some sadistic bastard who had an extreme hatred of women. We never did purchase a proper vacuum, always going for the cheapest, lowest-grade version of whatever Dirt Devil upright was available. They suck, by the way.

Dyson, however, is enough to actually make me look forward to cleaning out my house this weekend. I already vacuumed a room with it and almost had an orgasm at how well the carpets came clean. I'll be a true domestic goddess in no time, just you wait. Next week I'm going to try ironing.