Rule #6

Well, it's time to enact rule #6. To refresh your memory, rule #6 of the Stuff Stand-off is that if we are given something by someone else that we want to keep, something already in the house has to go.

Over the last few weeks we've acquired some stuff. I've kept track of it here and there so we could be sure to get rid of some things, and it was nothing major. A ceramic pot that went with beautiful tulips, a Coast Guard sweatshirt from my sister which was given to Jonathan at Christmas but needed to be a different size (it came in the mail last week), and a couple of books that people gave me to read. We knew that the exchange had to be made, but we hadn't gotten around to it.

Then this past Sunday I was given a gift at church - a big gift. There's a local painter in town who had painted a picture of the Blessing of the Hunt, an Annual Southern Pines Thanksgiving Day tradition that I have been able to take part in over the last two years (the Anglican priest in town does the blessing). It's a totally cool event, with the local riders dressed in their red coats, and the hounds prepared to follow the fox scent, and hundreds of people there to watch the blessing and see the horses ride off into the woods. It's one of those quintessential Southern Pines events that you wouldn't find anywhere else, and it's one of the reasons I love it here so much.

Anyway, this artist's beautiful painting featured - you got it - me! So there I am with my hand raised in blessing and all the horses and riders and dogs gathered around me. It's a great piece, with vibrant colors and a gold frame. It's unlike anything Jonathan and I have in our possession. The piece was donated to the Penick Art Show, where the money for it's purchase would benefit residents at the nursing home who had run out of funds. I would have loved to have bought it, but besides remembering the Stand-off, it was outside of our price range. Instead I simply admired it from afar.

But my great friends and parishioners decided I had to have it, and presented me with it on Sunday. And I'm thrilled. This is the kind of thing that I'll cherish for the rest of my life. But now it was officially time to move some things out of our house.

So we did a little "spring cleaning" the other day, given that it was finally 70 degrees here. I have to admit, I was a little embarrassed going through our closets to see how much we had in there that had to go. And we only went through two closets! For the purpose of record-keeping, here's what is on it's way out the door:

- Sheets. We had five sets of sheets for beds that we no longer have - twins and fulls. I was keeping them for some reason. Just in case we got another full sized bed I guess. But we have a king, and our guest room is a queen, and there was just no reason to have all those sheets. We even got rid of a king and queen set that we know for sure will never be used again.

- Framed pictures. Since we got a framed picture, we figure it's time to let go of some. We have a small collection of framed pieces (mostly that belonged to my dad) that live in a closet in our study that will likely never hang on our walls. We keep them for sentimental reasons, or because we deeply love the people we acquired them from. But it's time. Time to realize that those pictures are not my father, and by giving them away I am not giving away my memory of him. I simply cannot carry a closet full of paintings to each house I move to.

- Board games. I wish I could say we made a huge sacrifice here, but we simply got rid of board games that we had multiples of, or that I had never even played and/or heard of. We had two of the original Trivial Pursuit games, and seven - that's right, SEVEN - Scrabble games. Two travel Scrabbles, an Onyx edition, a Super Scrabble, two regular red boxed Scrabbles, and one older version of Scrabble. We only got rid of one of them I think. I still have some work to do on letting go of Scrabble. No wait - we decided to get rid of two. Either way, it was good to cleanse the game closet, and actually with the sheets gone we were able to add the games to what has previously been the overflowing linen closet.

- A couple of throw pillows. We recently discovered that we have 13 spare pillows in our house, not counting the ones on our bed. I thought about keeping these particular throw pillows (from a couch we have given away) for meditation practice, but who am I kidding? If I need a pillow I have PLENTY of alternatives.

That's it for now. Probably I should get rid of one set of sheets at a time so I can stretch that over the year for any other gifts I get, but I think that might be cheating. So we're taking them all at once.

When I'm finished with this blog, I'll be going to get the painting out of the car and hanging it on my wall. Maybe I'll post a picture. I will love having it, and love knowing what I had to give away in order to have it on the wall. Maybe I'll even appreciate it more that way!