cleaning out my closet
Alright, so I'm already done with that. In fact, that was the easy part. The rest of it is an uphill battle for sure. My mission: to turn the time capsule that is my old room into my room once again. And by time capsule I do mean time capsule. There are things stashed away in there from my high school days that haven't moved in more than 10 years. To add to that, my brother decided to make the room his storage area/dumping ground. And to top it off, my mom liked to keep things (some random, some not) in the room also. All in all, considering I had basically moved 90% of all my belongings out while I was away, I'd guess somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of all the stuff in the room isn't mine.
I've never felt more motivated to throw things away. The difficulty comes in knowing it's not my stuff to throw away. As much as I've grown out of being a pack rat, it's much different trying to reverse the accumulation that 3 different people have contributed to. My efforts will mostly be reduced to moving things around. I really want to start this off fresh.
There's also the emotional aspect of it that's challenging. I can't get myself to dispose of things until I've at least looked them over in detail, and that's where I get stuck. It's one of those times you wish you didn't have such a good memory. Everything seems to carry some kind of memory with it, and I'm not one to trash memories. So that means the clothes that my mom bought me or my brother or herself that never left their respective bags or boxes are so difficult to part with. Receipts and handwritten notes. For some things, I can take photographs of them and look the other way as I relegate them to the trash pile, but some things will never evoke the some reactive in their material absence. It's one of my dreaded responsibilities of adulthood, but I'm through with it being a stumbling block for what I'm making room for.
Alright, so I'm already done with that. In fact, that was the easy part. The rest of it is an uphill battle for sure. My mission: to turn the time capsule that is my old room into my room once again. And by time capsule I do mean time capsule. There are things stashed away in there from my high school days that haven't moved in more than 10 years. To add to that, my brother decided to make the room his storage area/dumping ground. And to top it off, my mom liked to keep things (some random, some not) in the room also. All in all, considering I had basically moved 90% of all my belongings out while I was away, I'd guess somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of all the stuff in the room isn't mine.
I've never felt more motivated to throw things away. The difficulty comes in knowing it's not my stuff to throw away. As much as I've grown out of being a pack rat, it's much different trying to reverse the accumulation that 3 different people have contributed to. My efforts will mostly be reduced to moving things around. I really want to start this off fresh.
There's also the emotional aspect of it that's challenging. I can't get myself to dispose of things until I've at least looked them over in detail, and that's where I get stuck. It's one of those times you wish you didn't have such a good memory. Everything seems to carry some kind of memory with it, and I'm not one to trash memories. So that means the clothes that my mom bought me or my brother or herself that never left their respective bags or boxes are so difficult to part with. Receipts and handwritten notes. For some things, I can take photographs of them and look the other way as I relegate them to the trash pile, but some things will never evoke the some reactive in their material absence. It's one of my dreaded responsibilities of adulthood, but I'm through with it being a stumbling block for what I'm making room for.
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