...by taking things out of it. There was a weekend last year when I finally understood and internalized the raw fact that we weren't moving into a new house any time soon. We'd been in our starter house for nine years, and I checked Zillow.com, and something went "click" in my brain. If I wanted to live somewhere better with more space, it would be because I upgraded this house and got rid of a bunch of stuff. The upgrades have gone very well, and should form the subject of many posts which are relevant to the title of this blog. This essay is about de-cluttering, specifically lessons and hang-ups experienced by a pair of engineers who were raised by people who were raised by people who lived through the depression. I had previously considered "clutter" to mean useless trinkets set out for decoration, so I didn't think I had any. Nope. I could look around my house as a whole, and think, "How do two adults and one cat need so much STUFF to...