the great vacation purge

This vacation is all about personal cleansing, in a way. The yoga will bring my body as well as my mind to new places (my teacher asked me what I wanted to work on this week, and since I didn’t have a ready answer, she decided for me, and of course we’ll be doing my least favorite pose, due to the excruciating pain it causes, Virasana). But I’m also going to be working on my living space, too. It’s time to really purge, get rid of clutter, stop holding on to a lot of crap that I keep around.

For instance, this morning, before yoga, I shreded a ton of bank statements, bills, and the like. Here’s the progress about halfway through.

And next will be the great magazine removal. The boy has been growing increasingly surly about all the magazines I have all over the house, and with good reason. This is ridiculous. Do I ever go through them again? No. There are magazines from 2003. Here’s all the magazines I discovered from various piles and shelves in the house.

I sorted them into five–yes, FIVE–piles. Closest are Bon Appetits, then Yoga Journals, then Cooking Lights, then the monstrous MSL pile, and finally, waay in the back, “other,” which has alumnae magazines, an occasional Gourmet, and some Shapes. The Other pile will easily be chucked. The MSLs . . . Well, I’d like to think I could just chuck them, but truth is, I’ll pull out a few select issues and will look through them (Valentine’s, Thanksgiving, Christmas). Cooking Lights are far, far, harder to toss–even though I’m fully aware that all the recipes are online. Same goes for Bon Appetits. What is it about me and my magazines? I latch onto them long after they’ve ceased to be pertinent in my life. I really ought to just pitch them all without looking at them–that’s what this weekend of purging is about, right? Just gotta find some strength, and some big bags to transport them to the recycling bin . . .