making space: day 1

Today I started in on my 24 day personal space reclaimation project.  I worked on head space and home space today.  First, a five mile run on the Clear Creek trail, which always clears my mind of disharmony and stressful thoughts and clears my body of that lethargic feeling that sets in hard on dark, cold, winter days.  The snow had stopped but the wind kicked up a little, and every time I ran by a patch of trees, they blew snow in miniature storms all over me.  It was envigorating.  It was downright delightful.  I loved it.

When I got home, I was sort of mulling over where to start with today's purge of something that is taking up unnecessary space and making me less than happy in my little home.  I was right in thinking that something would force itself to my attention.  I was doing laundry and thought, hey, I should get out the flannel sheets.  They are so cozy in the winter.  I opened the linen closet in the bathroom, which is where I thought they were, but they weren't in there.  They should've been in there, but the closet was full of so much crap there was no way they could be in there.  Ah ha.  This is it, then.  An opportunity.  An hour later, I had a much more straightened and somewhat more orderly linen closet, purged of things like twin sheets (going to charity--we don't even have a twin bed in this house any longer), old meds (my son's asthma medicine, for example, which he hasn't needed since he was ten), stuff I'd had for potential childhood emergencies when the kids were little (i.e., a bottle of Syrup of Ipecac with an expiration date of 1995), pillow cases (why did I have twenty?), a leg cooling gizmo that I used after my knee surgery 12 years ago...you get the picture.  I now have room for the flannel sheets, if I can only find them.  I have a feeling that I know where to look, and that closet, too, is ripe for a purge, so that may be tomorrow's project.

Photo: my great-grandmother Esther, who was a most gracious and beautiful person.