Spring Cleaning

A number of times a year I find myself sorting through my clothes (and there are a lot of them) in a bid to make some space. Each time I find that 90% of my clothes go straight back where they came from. The other 10%, I stand staring at for ages.

Shall I keep it? Hmm...am I ever going to wear it again? Probably not, but what if...? I'll keep it, just in case...you never know.

However during a recent sort through I decided that I would be ruthless, I was not going to hang on to stuff that I wasn't going to wear.
Tops were discarded, dresses were dispatched; the combat trousers that, although I know are coming back in to fashion, I will never wear again, all gone. Even a couple of pairs of shoes went (but keep quiet about that as the rest of my shoes might get worried! ;)).
None of the times were wasted, most of it went to my sister, a pair of shoes went on eBay, a few things I put to one side to dismantle and turn in to something else and the rest were parcelled off to the local charity shop.
My wardrobe is still overflowing - I am a fully-fledged shopaholic!

I can tell what you are now thinking.

What does this have to do with writing?

I'll tell you.

The grand sorting out of Chippy's clothes 2010 prompted me to sort through some other things, make-up, books etc.
The final item to sort through was my handbag. As I emptied it, all sorts of things came tumbling out.
Receipts, pens, bills (paid ones), lip balms, allergy tablets from last summer, an umbrella, a notebook I keep notes for my novel in, and bits of paper. Loads and loads of bits of paper, with random notes and ideas scribbled on to them, which had then been banished to the bottom of my bag.

I decided to sort through these notes and write then down in one of the many notebooks that I own, which I bought because I thought they looked 'pretty'.
As I went through them some were written straight in to the notebook. And then with about 10% of them (like with my clothes), I sat and pondered over for a while.

How did I come up with that idea? What was I thinking? That's no good.

My eyes were trained on the rubbish bin, as my hand prepared to scrunch the piece of paper up in to a ball.

No, that idea may come in handy one day; I can adapt it into something at least half decent.

So, when it comes to writing, unlike with my clothes, clinging on to long forgotten items is a good thing.

You never know when half an idea that you scribbled down will become a fully formed story. And ideas scribbled down in this way don't take up half as much room as my clothes! :)