This quote from the Take Your Time book especially, um, timely:

If your life seems cluttered, ask yourself if you have got caught in some hobby that may be harmless but time-consuming. Are you spending more time than you would like on a pet hobby, a cherished collection? Even worthwhile activities can come to dominate our time if we do not consciously ask ourselves that question now and then.

It was a particularly poignant question as I stood in my now cleared out school/craft room. I have needed to purge in there for some time. In fact, most of what was purged came INto this house with us. So it’s been a very long time. It was not lethargy but rather life that impeded purging progress. Life had to slow down for a bit so this could happen though. It was necessary. Supplies for these ‘worthwhile activities’ were cluttering up my life.

So, channeling Peter Walsh, I did my best impression of a Clean Sweep episode. We took EVERYTHING but the books out of the room and sorted them by categories. Every notebook page, sticker, glue stick, puzzle piece, math manipulative. Boxes and bags of things we no longer need nor love were hauled out. Now the sorted categories of keepers need to be returned, hopefully in a more user friendly manner. The preschool stuff is all back in. The toys were ruthlessly culled (which surprisingly has made little people MUCH happier). Crafts are next. Wish me luck. : )

This quote made me think of Peter Walsh’s admonition to gauge your accumulation of stuff to the house you are in. Easwaran’s advice is to fit your activities into the life you are in as well. It is good to step back and consider which things in life are most time-consuming and whether those are still areas into which you wish to pour your time and energy. In some cases the answer was yes. In some no. In some it was yes, but. I still wish to scrapbook. I do not wish to take up sewing clothes again. I still wish to homeschool, but I don’t want so many odds and ends of flimsy materials. A few sturdy things work better with the children at home now.

I trust this whole evaluation process will bless us in the end. I can say with certainty that the rooms that were purged before this one have continued to be far lower maintenance. It will be a good thing. Right now I just look fondly to the “end” part.