Continuing my happiness project I decided to take one of the first bits of wisdom Gretchen provided in her very own happiness project, i.e. that every month you should set goals, or projects, with varying degrees of manageability.  I liked this idea as it is a way to keep tabs on progress while, also, getting things done 😉

Reading about Gretchen’s progress, one of her first projects was to tackle clutter. Looking around at the situation here I too thought this would be a good first project to tackle myself.  For me, however, this project felt like it was a little more than not unwieldy so I decided to break it down into two parts:

1. part 1: clothes (now)
2. part 2: shelves and other stuffs (end of September)

So this past weekend I set out to tackle part 1: clothes.  For me, this part was simply a massive undertaking. However, it was truly enlightening and refreshing and all that. Having lost weight over the past year I knew some clothes I would just get rid of as they would be too big and not wanting to go that direction weight-wise again, I decided it would be best to get rid of everything I thought was just too big now, and there was a lot! So VERY cool, yes indeed. However, over the course of going through my current clothing situation I also ended up having the staunch realization that I had/have a problem, re: clothes spending as I realized that I had WAY too many clothing items and that this was contributing to some of the debt I had been accumulating over the years.  All I could do, say, feel, was whoa!  Over the weekend I went through a whole series of emotions from: holy shit!, to what the f%*k, to ok good, at least I’m chipping away, to feelings of depression, to just feeling good about things again and knowing that I was in a state of mind ready to make a change and grow.

In the process of folding all items I wanted to depart with nicely in piles, I began thinking of what to do with these items. I couldn’t just give them away to people I knew as I was, and still am a big guy, bigger than most people I know – even though I’m chipping away at this and making great progress, as I’ve mentioned here many times – self encouragement here ;).  Talking with my parents, my mom wanted me to try selling some of my clothing items noting some had been barely, if ever, worn. At first I thought this was a good idea as I know, through experience, how hard it is for a big guy to find clothing. However this also brought back emotions of depression and dread as the realization came back of what I had done, re: spending. With that, I packed all the clothes up in bags (*6* full garbage bags of big and tall clothing as the picture above illustrates) and donated all items to the Canadian diabetes foundation. Someone there might be a tad baffled as to how to deal with the situation. I hope they can figure it out though and hopefully they can do the hard work in selling what they can to other fellow big and tall dudes (we stick together gentlemen), or women who like baggy pjs 😉 – with the money they make helping to contribute to finding a cure (both my grandmothers had diabetes).

I truly felt that a pressure had been lifted (so, yea, these self-help-esque type projects do work).

So, having done part 1 of my massive declutter project I have some space to breathe.  I feel good about it, and I know now that I had a wee tad of a little problem re: spending, and that now I can face it head on, learn from it, and grow. I’m looking forward to part 2 at the end of the month. I’m sure I might go through some similar emotions but I’m also sure that it will be a good thing – t.Mac