ah luvz mah shoos - bit too muches?

as i work through my OCD - specifically the hoarding aspects of my OCD - i'm learning i need to re-evaluate what exactly it is to be organised in a healthy way. over the last three decades my fear of loss and my need for perfection in all aspects of my life have buried me in stuff. stuff that i don't really need, or even want usually, but stuff that i feel compelled to keep just in case. or because someone gave it to me. or because no-one else would want it and i feel guilty just throwing it out.

bit by bit i am letting go of all the stuff, and emotional baggage that have held me captive for most of my life. (perhaps you now understand the name of the blog, hee hee). as i do so, i am also learning to let go of my perfectionism in the way things are organised, letting things be just as they are now, rather than perfect, thus allowing me to actually move through things - both figuratively and literally.

now i seem to have reached a point where the i'm trying to organise those things i am keeping, and trying to decide what is really healthy, reasonable, adaptive. i get that organising my cds roughly alphabetically, and loosely by genre is probably a time saver, and not too obsessive. aiming to organise my myriad books by the dewy decimal system is probably a goal i should not pursue :) things get a little grey however for me at some points. for instance, is keeping all of my shoes paired, boxed, and in one place, a good way to keep them together, clean and undamaged in a multi-pet household? is it a good way to keep track of all of my shoes so that it is easier to set limits and purge? or is it perhaps overkill...a tad on the obsessive side...

i think the shoe example is probably healthy. i can decide how many pairs of shoes i really think i need, or want anyways, and then get the appropriate number of boxes. the shoes that do not fit inside the boxes, go. i think it's a tangible way to limit myself, and to help keep myself on track. that way if i want another pair of shoes, at the point of purchase i will need to think, "which pair of shoes will i give away or throw out to make room for these?" and if i can't bear to part with any of the foot wear at home, the new pair will not come back with me.

there are times i really wish i had a much larger apartment, and then i remember, if i had more space, i would only have filled it. and then i would have that much more to go through.