{"id":3063,"date":"2014-03-05T20:41:47","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T01:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/?p=3063"},"modified":"2014-07-17T16:40:29","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T20:40:29","slug":"36569a-ash-wednesday-a-drawer-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/36569a-ash-wednesday-a-drawer-a-day\/","title":{"rendered":"A Drawer A Day: Ash Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Days-365+69a-ADAD-Ash-Wed.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-3060\" alt=\"Days 365+69a ADAD-Ash Wed\" src=\"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Days-365+69a-ADAD-Ash-Wed-150x150.gif\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Some folk take to living lightly easily. They may have been downsizing and simplifying for quite a while. Maybe this is you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Others, however, feel intimidated by the challenge of letting go of stuff \u2013 both clothing and beloved mementos. I often suggest that they start small \u2013 perhaps just clean out a drawer. Even if you don\u2019t go any further, at least you have one cleaner drawer.<\/p>\n<p>This prompted me to check out whether I could do this myself and thus was born my plan to prune A Drawer A Day for the next six weeks. As a Lenten practice it\u2019s a way to pay attention to the interior. What\u2019s inside me that could use some pruning \u2013 perhaps some attitudes that I\u2019ve hung on to that are no longer serving me well, perhaps some selfishness, perhaps some pride. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The State of my drawers \u2013<\/strong> In taking inventory of the furniture in our house I found:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>120 drawers<\/li>\n<li>58 shelves (not counting book shelves)<\/li>\n<li>15 of these shelves partially serve the purpose of drawers because they are in closets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">Following are some rules I\u2019ve set for myself:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Given that I have more than 40 drawers, theoretically I could do more than one drawer a day. I know, however, that some of the drawers in our grown kids&#8217; vacated rooms are empty. I\u2019m starting with just one drawer a day as a base. If I feel motivated some days to do more, fine. We\u2019ll see.<\/li>\n<li>All the organizing books and gurus I\u2019ve read recommend emptying the drawer, closet, storage space first and then gradually put back only the items one intends to keep. I think this makes sense. It not only will force me to decide if each item is worth keeping, it will help me start with a clean drawer.<\/li>\n<li>If I find nothing in the day\u2019s drawer that I am willing to part with, I will go on to the next drawer until I find some thing to give away or throw away.<\/li>\n<li>File cabinets don\u2019t count. (We have eight. These alone could be a project for one full Lent.)<\/li>\n<li>Drawers in Jim\u2019s office don\u2019t count unless they contain common family items that I use too.<\/li>\n<li>Although I\u2019m going drawer by drawer, we have nine rooms in our home and two baths. I\u2019m aiming at approximate a room a week. That\u2019s probably overly ambitious.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I invite you to join me and let me know how you\u2019re doing. Hopefully, we can learn from each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some folk take to living lightly easily. They may have been downsizing and simplifying for quite a while. Maybe this is you. Others, however, feel intimidated by the challenge of letting go of stuff \u2013 both clothing and beloved mementos. I often suggest that they start small \u2013 perhaps just clean out a drawer. Even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-3063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-drawer-a-day","tag-faith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3063"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3068,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions\/3068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}