Clean Sweep?

This wild weekend was the great garage sale of '07. Heather and her friend were doing most of the organization since they're planning on going on a missions trip to England and they're still trying to raise money. (speaking of which, keep checking the mail for an opportunity to support ME on my missions trip to Nigeria!) This is going to really shock you, but a garage sale, outside, in June in Texas, is not the greatest idea anyone's ever had. Surprisingly enough, it gets hot...really, really hot. We actually ended up quitting by two o'clock each day, which is new for me in my career in garage sales. So, my sister skipped out on the second day, leaving me and my mom to hold down the fort. We had a lot of hispanic people visit us, and the strange thing that I noticed is that no one would come for about an hour, then all of a sudden like four cars would pull up and a bunch of people would pile out. We sold a fair amount of stuff, although there was at least an equally fair amount of stuff that didn't sell.

It was good to clean out the house, whether the stuff goes to goodwill or we're able to sell it. Come home to find out that there's nowhere to put the stuff from school because of all the old stuff that never got moved out...of my room or the rest of the house. I don't think I've gone through most of my stuff since before I left for college, so I've come to find that there's all this crap that I shouldn't even own. I haven't lived here officially for four years, so I guess I could just come home from school and dump more stuff here without having to worry about what to keep and what to get rid of. So I feel like I don't even have room to open a box, let alone unpack one.

There has been a quandry for me since I've come home, what to keep and what to throw away. There has been so much stuff accumulated in the course of my lifetime that really wouldn't have a place in any sort of apartment I would have in the future. Stuff that doesn't even have sentimental value, it's just stuff. Why keep it? So I am going to try to get rid of everything I can bear to part with. I believe in simplicity, although it's hard for me to understand what that means. I generally spend most of my time falling to one extreme or the other, asceticism and guilt or indulgence and rationalizing. How to negotiate the fine line? I...uh, don't know. Any thoughts, beyond the life purging garage sale in which nobody buys your stuff.