Category Archives: Procrastination

Thoughts on the Urge to Purge

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Loads of articles encourage retirees to declutter our possessions and purge decades of accumulation. My generation is repeatedly reminded our kids won’t want our stuff. True. They’ll want it after we’ve given it away. Or never. 

Purging sounds so virtuous.

The philosophy of decluttering or purging goes like this—discard what you don’t need. Pare down your belonging to the essentials. Ideally, give your stuff to someone who can use it. The process is also supposed to offer emotional benefits:

  • Get rid of what weighs you down—the boxes full of old files, the clothes that don’t fit, the shopping mistakes. Let go of the emotional weight of caring for all these things. The sense of responsibility and guilt are bad for you. 
  • Think how light and refreshed you’ll feel when you have less stuff. Less to take care of. A clean slate. (Who the heck even knows what a slate is? Well OK, I do. It’s a personal chalkboard students did schoolwork on. I have one in my office closet that belonged to my grandfather. I’m not even that attached to it. Would a history museum want this artifact? Probably not, since my brother crayoned on it.)

The decisions and matchmaking are what short circuit the urge to purge. 

Neighborhood Buy Nothing groups make it easier. You feel good about the matchmaking. The groups are well suited to offloading housewares and furnishings you no longer use. When we got a king bed, someone wanted our queen size mattress and bed frame. All I had to do was snap a photo and post the items. The neighbor who wants your stuff picks it up. No more loading up the car for a trip to Goodwill and driving bags and boxes around for weeks until you do the drop-off. No more staging a tedious garage sale only to find you still have to dispose of what didn’t sell.

Local Buy Nothing groups do a brisk trade in kids’ clothing, toys and equipment. I recently acquired a second booster seat for family dinners and I often scan posts for age-appropriate toys. My granddaughters’ wardrobes are supplemented with barely-worn-before-they’re-outgrown clothes and shoes from active Buy Nothing groups. The amount and quality of free stuff is astonishing. 

People of my generation used to take things to Goodwill or similar charitable organizations. Sometimes I still do—mostly clothes. Recently, an energetic friend’s clean sweep inspired me to pack up a load of clothes and old purses I don’t use. Won’t use. I do feel a bit virtuous. 

But right now, I’d like to purge any additional demands to declutter. Unload all those reminders and the associated guilt. It’s yet another thing that would be good for me . . . that I don’t feel like doing. Besides, the slate doesn’t take up much room in my closet.

Procrastination—I haven’t lost my touch!

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I used to be a pretty good procrastinator. Not a champion, but definitely a contender. My peak performance was from my undergraduate years into my early thirties.

Paper due Monday morning? I’d get jacked up on coffee and start work by 9 p.m., telling myself, “I work better under pressure.” More accurately, it was the only time I worked. But I’d better have a draft by 2 a.m., because after that my brain would fizz out and all the coffee in the world couldn’t bring back coherent thought. Unfortunately, that system worked well enough to regularly give me B+s, which only reinforced my procrastinating ways.

By the time I was in my 30’s, I was married, had two sons, and was working full-time. Way too many chores and too little time! If I didn’t attack a distasteful task like putting away holiday decorations, they would stay untouched for weeks, a constant depressing reminder. I learned to slog through scutwork more promptly because the alternative was worse.

Fear of failing my clients and losing business kept me from procrastinating too much when I had my communications business. I’d learned that I had to build in time to write a draft, let the piece cool off for days (or at least hours), and then revise it before sending it to the client. When I had a particularly tedious project, say catalog merchandise copy or highly technical training materials, I might suddenly feel an acute need to do something I never do like alphabetizing spices or organizing my sock drawer. At very least, I’d clean the kitchen and switch loads of laundry (something! anything!) to postpone the icky project.

When our sons were little, unwelcome tasks were constant: their toys were scattered everywhere, and they drizzled on their clothes so there was more laundry. Seeing two days’ worth of crusty sippy cups and soggy cereal bowls piling up made me want to run away from home. I realized that sometimes it’s better to tackle the work right away and get it over with. After all, I’m never going to wantto do dishes. They only get more gross the longer they sit.

These days, I’m more inclined to get chores out of the way. Sort of. For at least four weeks the special tile cleaner I bought sat in the bathroom while I put off using it. Today, there’s a tricky part of an essay I meant to revise. Instead, I cleaned out my file entitled, “Blog Ideas,” and decided to write this!