i took a few weeks off before the weddings start to pile on next weekend. i’m a very organized person and deem it completely necessary to get one’s life in order before embarking on several weeks of busy madness. in order to prepare, i caught up on all of my photography bookkeeping, ordering, etc. my computer is in for a tune-up, fixed my contact prescription, and finally…decided to clean out my closet.
cleaning out my closet isn’t an easy feat. geoff and i have a closet in our bedroom, but i found when we moved in that i had too many clothes. we couldn’t fit both of our clothes in one closet, so i’m using the closet in my office for my clothes. :) i was a teacher then and, as all teachers know, we have a lot of stuff. tons of stuff. and we’re the worst when it comes to throwing anything away because we’re totally of the mindset, “maybe i can use this someday! maybe someday i’ll get moved to 4th grade and this will be relevant. maybe someday i’ll get moved to preschool and this will be relevant. maybe…maybe!” and so you just keep it. you keep everything.
so after i quit teaching, i wasn’t sure what to do with all of my stuff. at that point i was doing photography on the side as a hobby and the idea had just formed to try and make it into a business. but i had spent most of my high school and college life with several artsy hobbies, but always thinking i’d end up a teacher. well i loved the kids i taught, but i hated teaching…and realized that what i wanted most of all was my own business. but i still couldn’t get rid of the stuff…because i’m still always like, “maybe someday i’ll need it!!!”
so two years later, i’m stuck with a giant 12lb box of clay, big laminated stop signs with arrows that signify how loud your voice should be at any given moment, and lots and lots of clipboards…all sitting in the closet.
thankfully, my friend kate just got a teaching job and this gave me the perfect opportunity to give her stuff!! i threw a lot of it away because it wouldn’t be useful anymore to anyone, and i gave her a box of stuff that i thought she might be able to use (someday!) if not now.
it is so, so hard throwing stuff away for me. i always do it – but usually 3 years or so after it needed to be done. because really…now that i’m a full-time wedding photographer, there just isn’t a need for “what punctuation do you need?” signs.
