So Where Is All That Decluttering?

Hello! Is everyone okay?? Hasn’t this been (and continuing to be) a strange and amazing time? KK and I actually got to go to some yard sales on Friday, and it struck me that I never heard the words coronavirus, Covid, or pandemic in any of my eavesdropping through the morning. Instead, folks around here are using the phrase “all this,” as in “Before all this we were planning to do such and such.” I wonder if it's that ancient tendency not to give power to something evil by speaking its name.

If that works, let’s all do it!

We’re fine at my house, and probably definitely experienced less disruption than many. There are advantages to being an introvert living alone. Though many of us introverts have discovered there is quite a difference between staying home because we want to – and staying home because we have to. Our greatest privation was the closing of our dog parks for several weeks; thank heavens for my biggish yard and dogs who like to retrieve balls.

My big stay-at-home focus has been the landscaping of my yard. It was pretty much a blank slate when I moved in. (Except for the ever-fertile weeds, goldurn ‘em.) 

I've been working on it (slowly, because I am an old lady) since I moved in, and am starting to see some results. 

One of the businesses that have remained open are plant nurseries, and I live in the Willamette Valley, which is nursery heaven. I read somewhere that we have more wholesale nurseries here than anywhere else in America, and the plants you buy wherever you are have a good chance of originating here. So, other than the grocery store and the pharmacy, nurseries have been just about the only place I've gone since March. Plus, friends like my gardening buddy Lysa have shared plants from their gardens. Anyone want to guess how many I've put into the dirt since mid-March?

At last count…148.

Some went into containers, like my new window boxes, and many more into the ground. 

Almost everything is thriving, and I sure hope that continues. I really don't want to plant anything over again!

While I've been working outside, it's my impression that many folks have been going through their homes for some serious decluttering. I’m not planning to go to any estate sales for the foreseeable future, since they are usually inside a house. But outdoor sales, bring ‘em on – with all that decluttering I've been thinking this will be a good garaging season.

So it was with high hopes that KK and I donned our masks and gloves and headed out into the sunshine Friday morning. And what did we find? How much did we spend???

Between us, we spent…fifty cents. Yup. At the last stop KK bought a fifty cent spatula. That was it. We went to 10 or so sales, and by and large what we saw was stuff that even I would likely throw away. And I don't throw away anything without thinking twice about it.

But what the heck. We got outside for a while, talked to a few people (from several feet away), and avoided adding any clutter to our own homes. I count that as a good day’s work…and there’s always the next time!