Today has been a little slice of domestic bliss.

To curb the heat I made a nice pitcher of cucumber water and another one of mint water to refresh everyone (it's really easy, just slice up some cucumber or fresh herbs and throw them into your water pitcher to add a light flavor) and then I hung the laundry outside on the line instead of tumble drying it for a change. I love the smell of line dried sheets!

We are preparing for a garage sale this week so I've been busy with the daunting task of sorting through the house and garage for items. It's been emotional because everything reminds me of my father, who recently passed away. But it has also been a magical afternoon for that very reason, I feel like I've been visiting with him all day.

And as I've been going through all this stuff I've been learning a valuable thing about letting go of clutter. It's so easy to get caught up in the memories attached to things and hold onto each and every item just for that reason, but really how often do you stop to even look at that item ever again? I've come to realize that the thing about stuff...is that it is just stuff. My memories are in my mind, not the object I'm holding, and while it is important to keep certian special things that remind us of people, too many things can have the adverse effect and crowd up our lives until there is no room for new memories or new people to come in. So today, I have been taking the time to just be with each item, enjoying it's memories for a moment and then letting the item go.

All too often when we see something beautiful our first instinct is to possess it, but the minute we possess it, we then quickly forget about it and move onto the next thing. So it has been good practice for me to resist that instinct and instead to just take a moment and truly enjoy each item's beauty, really looking at it and being honored by its presence, without needing anything in return, much like we would enjoy another person or a beautiful day. In fact, if this were a perfect world, I think that is the way we would treat everything we come across, with the care to really see it and the respect to never possess it.