Simplicity is complicated

There's a company in Seattle called 1-800-JUNK.  I see their trucks all the time, so they must do a good business.  They'll come and haul your old stuff off to the expensive municipal transfer station (we don't use the "dump" word in Seattle) or, wherever?  Once you pay them, it isn't your problem anymore. They left a flier on our front porch a month ago, which was slightly insulting, like getting unsolicited negative feedback from a stranger. 

But, it made me take a hard look at our mess of a yard. There's a fine line between shabby chic and plain old shabby.  I was crossing over into trashy territory. To make it worse, I had those aches and pains last fall so I didn't do my usual tidy cleanup.

Our slightly falling down gazebo (which I dearly love for its Wabi-Sabi perfection) was crammed willy-nilly with lawn chairs, tables, mossy garden "ornaments" and all the other stuff I'd shoved in there to "store" for the winter.  No wonder it caught the eye of the junk man. The garden was littered with moldy and cracked pots full of dead or just plain ugly root-bound plants.  And the shed/garage?  Enough to make a 1-800-JUNK guy salivate.

So I've been on a huge cleaning out, cleaning up jag this week-- room by room, space by space, indoors and outdoors. I'm not nearly done, but starting to feel light as a feather. Yesterday two big loads went to the Goodwill: boxes of pots, vases, plastics, hoses made in hell, old yard tools, TWO spreaders for spewing chemicals on the lawn (really?) and so on.

It's going to be a beautiful spring day, perfect for ferreting out more clutter and dirt.  When the sun comes up, the plan is to clean the outside windows and pull the Christmas lights down from the arbor where the clematis is now starting to bloom.  Yes, you heard me right. Christmas lights.