Currently, I am in the process of packing up for yet another move. This will make the tenth move in ten years. One of the aspects to moving that I really enjoy is the opportunity to scale back on the random items I seem to accumulate. As someone who desperately wants to get back to the “empty backpack” metaphor, I am trapped in a packrat’s lifestyle. Accumulating household items and clothing I may never wear, “just in case” has become my M.O. It seems like no matter how much I get rid of, I still keep way too much because in my mind, I paid for things so why ditch them if I might end up wanting or needing them some day. That forced logic keeps perfectly nice items of clothing that look horrid on me permanently tucked in my closet or countless vases and serving dishes crowding my kitchen cabinets. Well, with a friend’s help and a move in progress I think I might be ready to let some of the physical baggage go, so now I’m left to wonder if I can also let the emotional bags stay behind as well.
In addition to all my things, I have a tremendous amount of mental energy tied up in items of sentimental value. I also attach a deeper personal meaning to completely impersonal items because I’ve always been poor and never had many material goods. Surrounding myself with as much as possible feels a lot like a security blanket, albeit one that I now find is smothering me. So how do I lift this weight and get out from under it?
Most people entrust their parents to keep all the sentimental trinkets. The old school papers, artwork, photos, etc., most often crowd Mom’s attic. Well, what do you do when Mom is gone and you have to make the tough choices? As it turns out, it looks like neither my brother nor I will have children, so that makes me wonder why I am even keeping many of the purely sentimental items. I will have no one to pass these things on to or to show what Mommy was like when she was little, so why keep them at all. No one else cares about my report cards in high school or the yearbook I edited in fifth grade. All the greeting cards, artwork, young author’s books are not going to do anyone a bit of good so I think it is time to make peace with finally taking out the trash, sentimental though it may be.
As for the material items, just because I have a collection of random platters that I bought cheaply and have used for entertaining in the past does not mean I need to keep them all. My tastes have changed and yes, on some level maybe it is wasteful to give away perfectly useful items, but I am not using them and what’s more, that $10 platter I bought ten years ago has made up for the money saved and I think it’s okay to maybe replace it with more stylish pieces that reflect my personality. I even have an entire drawer of practically brand new bras that I bought because, yes, they were on sale, but I have since discovered they don’t fit right or they don’t make the girls look good and yet I keep them. Why? Because they were a good deal and they are brand new! I am mired in a mental logjam of clearance shopping and a more is more mentality.
I am not getting any younger and I think I have finally wised up to the fact that sometimes too much stuff is not only too much, but it obscures what is really meaningful. I am not going to drag unused items to one more address. My heart wants a more minimalist life and it is time I gave it what it desires. My personality has always been a bit contradictory on this front. I am not a person to have loads of friends, preferring instead to retain only the quality people in my life and yet I snatch up junk to crowd into my house like a hoarder in training! It is my time to scale down and peel back the layers of false security that so many things have provided. I know that there is an empty backpack around here somewhere . . . I just have to find it.
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