The Purge

It has been several weeks since I cleaned out my purse and this is what I have been left with. It is a much smaller collection of useful items than what I started with, and I am super proud of myself for paring my life down to this size. The process started with me dumping the entire contents of my mom-purse out on the ottoman and staring at it in wonder and embarrassment. I went through each and every item individually, considering how I thought it was useful and how it had been since I had actually used it. I found quite a bit of trash, which was easy to get rid of because, well, it was trash. I discovered I had more than 3 chapsticks and several lip glosses on top of those so I just had to choose the one I liked the best and stored the others away in my make-up bag. I also had at least three lotions, of which I really only used one, so I put the others in my bedside table.

There were tissues and phone chargers and work badges and bills and notepads and lots of writing utensils. I decided to create a pouch only for work that I can keep my work phone, charger, badges, keys, and miscellaneous passwords and business cards in that I only keep in my purse during the work day. I can take it out and leave it on my desk for the next day and still have everything in one place without cluttering up my regular life. I agonized over the bandaid situation because I find that I need them quite often, as do my children, and in the end I decided to update the collection to more useful sizes and shapes and keep them in the purse. I put all but one pen back in the desk drawer, tore out the used pages in my notepad, and only kept one of the notepads in circulation. I figured once the winter is over for good, I will not need the tissues anymore, so those are being kept temporarily. Certain medications are always needed during the day or taken on a schedule, and I'm sorry, but gum is a very handy thing to have so as not to offend anybody you are doing business with after lunch.

All in all, it was a successful sorting of the mom-purse. I can tell it was a successful sorting because I have kept the same amount of stuff out of the bag ever since I cleaned it out. This tells me I never really needed all of it in the first place. I have even been able to objectively go through it all and further eliminate items that at first I thought I really needed but then realized I didn't.

My proudest moment came about a week after the initial purging when Chad asked me if he could borrow my nail file and I said I didn't have one. This has happened several times, and each time it actually has not killed me to not have the item a person is requesting. It is so freeing to actually say no and not provide a solution to someone else's non-emergency. It's not that I don't care, and I'm still struggling with not being the one that has all the answers to everyone's every need, but it is encouraging to myself that my Lenten journey actually yielded some results.

I have since switched to a smaller purse altogether, one that cannot possibly hold all the stuff my former one used to. It is lighter and fits better in the center console of the car while I'm driving, and I have not smacked one person with it and made them almost fall over. I'm happy to not be such a large presence in the aisles of a store anymore.