There I was... minding my own business... and getting ready to tackle emptying the roll-top desk so it could be moved. I really wasn't ready to go through it just yet. I just know it's going to take either a bulldozer or a blowtorch to get rid of some of the stuff we have in it, so I decided to try something smaller... the oak filing cabinet. In cleaning out the filing cabinet, I found a plethora of old memories, just waiting to be dusted off and tossed out. I cannot believe I kept these things this long... just more testament to the packrat I had become. I decided to start by taking the drawers out. Easy enough, I thought. I'll just have someone with more testosterone than me remove them. Ugh... what a mess. I cringed as I began to go through the accumulated junk. Wait a minute... maybe some of it wasn't junk!
I found the boys' old school records... pictures of them when they were in school... report cards. This is a no-brainer. Keep... keep... keep. Boxes of old Christmas cards that had yet to be used. Okay, I can keep those too. I'll just use them up. Who am I kidding? I hardly ever write Christmas cards because I just never get to it. Last year was the first time in memory that I actually got to the Christmas cards along with the rest of my routine during the holidays. So I kept them. I had an awwww moment when I found a card to the boys in my mother's handwriting. I read it and almost cried. Okay, I'm keeping that too. I found things that were addressed to the boys... a couple of letters from and an article about a monk that I used to go to for counsel and that I insisted Jason go to see when he was going through an angry spell as a youth... schoolwork that Rhys had done when he was very young... a prayer card from my Uncle Dick's funeral. I kept all that. A letter from President George H. W. Bush, addressed to Jason, with 2 photographs and his signature. I insisted that Jason keep that. He wouldn't, so I did.
What I didn't keep amounted to a sizable stack resembling a small mountain. There was a stack of brochures from Vermont. Once upon a time, Steve and I had toyed with the idea of moving there. I think it was around the year 1895. Chunk. Brochures from Gatlinburg. We visited Gatlinburg about 7 years ago and loved it. We always said we were going to go again, but we haven't made it yet. Chunk. Brochures from Seattle. Who am I kidding... with the amount of rain and overcast sky they have, I'll never make it past a week. Chunk.
Then there were items that were from very specific periods in my life. All the cards and letters from Mary Kay Ash, when I was a promising consultant and rising star selling the Mary Kay line of cosmetics. True, Mary Kay is/was a famous lady and did a remarkable thing with her business, but did I really need to keep all of this? Chunk. Pictures from when I WAS this budding consultant... keep. I can't believe I was that young or that thin. An old resume showing me as an administrative assistant long before I took up my screwdriver to become a computer tech. Keep. You never know, I might decide to do that again since I'm making a career change right now. Old "funnies" that used to be circulated around offices before the days of computers. Chunk. An old brochure and a letter from Moats Resort. DEFINITELY keep. A program from the 1999-2000 season of Opera Memphis, my last year as the Wig and Makeup Designer. DEFINITELY chunk. I don't know who most of those people are anymore. And they wrote such nice thank-you cards. All of which I chunked.
Then there were the instruction manuals from appliances I hadn't had since the Ice Age. Oh please, why am I keeping these? Okay, you got me. I was never THAT bad about wanting to keep those. That was Steve's phobia... that we would get rid of an instruction manual we would need. I got rid of most of them. I got the stack down to a respectable pile and put the keepers back in the drawers.
Maybe someday I'll go through it all again and get rid of more. But then again... the roll-top is tomorrow. God help me.
Nazdrovie'
Paczki Puta
Showing posts with label packrat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label packrat. Show all posts
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Chaos and Transition
Oh my God... what have I started?
When I began this idea of redecorating my former bedroom into an office, little did I realize the chaos that would envelope the rest of the house. We have 5 days to live through this phase and I just hope we make it out alive.
You know how it is when you come from a Polish immigrant family and you're always afraid to get rid of something because "you might need it later"? That's me in a nutshell. Never letting loose of anything, including socks with holes in them. I always say "I can darn those socks, and then when we get a snow or ice storm, we'll have warm feet." Uh huh. That's the way things were in the old days when I lived in a suburb of Chicago. But I'm in Memphis now. Snow storms are rare. Socks go for $5.00 for a pack of 10, so what am I actually saving by holding onto these hole-y socks? Or the cough drops that seem to be melted into the end tables that came out of that room... ? Am I going to "need" them any time soon, or can I carry my happy butt down to Walgreens and get some more if I really have to? And tell me why, oh why, do I have so many plants in there? Am I afraid that the species will die out if I get rid of just ONE of the 10 philodendrons that I keep propagating?
Okay, you got me on the philodendrons. They're pretty and they provide oxygen to the house. But you get my idea. My house is full of things I haven't used in at least 10 years, don't look at, and absolutely won't get rid of. I found out how bad it had gotten while cleaning that room out. And we haven't even emptied the closets yet. Oh Lord, I hate to think of what's in there. I have shoes I'll never wear. Clothes I'll never fit back into (nor do I want to wear them again). Half-finished craft projects that are just sitting there taunting me.
All of this has made me realize just how much of a packrat I had become. I think decluttering your house is a 12-step program of realizations.
1. Admit that you're keeping things that should have gone out with the Crusades.
2. Realize that in a civilized world, you'll never again have to hang that glow-in-the dark Bobby Sherman poster.
3. Know that nobody needs more than 2 bellydance costumes. (I'm not even gonna explain this one.)
4. No one is going to pay top dollar for your coffee mug collection.
5. You CAN have too many baskets.
6. Knick-knacks are expensive dust-catchers.
7. So are mini-blinds... except for the expensive part.
8. Why are you saving all those little ketchup packets from Sonic?
9. There are beings living in your closet that shouldn't actually be there.
10. There's a reason you can't find anything.
11. You're never going to find the missing piece for that 1500-piece jigsaw puzzle.
12. More is not necessarily better.
Okay, RESOLVED: This is going to stop now. If I don't live up to that resolution, just pack me up with that old showgirl lamp and ship me off to the 1950's.
I'll keep you posted.
Nazdrovie'
Paczki Puta
When I began this idea of redecorating my former bedroom into an office, little did I realize the chaos that would envelope the rest of the house. We have 5 days to live through this phase and I just hope we make it out alive.
You know how it is when you come from a Polish immigrant family and you're always afraid to get rid of something because "you might need it later"? That's me in a nutshell. Never letting loose of anything, including socks with holes in them. I always say "I can darn those socks, and then when we get a snow or ice storm, we'll have warm feet." Uh huh. That's the way things were in the old days when I lived in a suburb of Chicago. But I'm in Memphis now. Snow storms are rare. Socks go for $5.00 for a pack of 10, so what am I actually saving by holding onto these hole-y socks? Or the cough drops that seem to be melted into the end tables that came out of that room... ? Am I going to "need" them any time soon, or can I carry my happy butt down to Walgreens and get some more if I really have to? And tell me why, oh why, do I have so many plants in there? Am I afraid that the species will die out if I get rid of just ONE of the 10 philodendrons that I keep propagating?
Okay, you got me on the philodendrons. They're pretty and they provide oxygen to the house. But you get my idea. My house is full of things I haven't used in at least 10 years, don't look at, and absolutely won't get rid of. I found out how bad it had gotten while cleaning that room out. And we haven't even emptied the closets yet. Oh Lord, I hate to think of what's in there. I have shoes I'll never wear. Clothes I'll never fit back into (nor do I want to wear them again). Half-finished craft projects that are just sitting there taunting me.
All of this has made me realize just how much of a packrat I had become. I think decluttering your house is a 12-step program of realizations.
1. Admit that you're keeping things that should have gone out with the Crusades.
2. Realize that in a civilized world, you'll never again have to hang that glow-in-the dark Bobby Sherman poster.
3. Know that nobody needs more than 2 bellydance costumes. (I'm not even gonna explain this one.)
4. No one is going to pay top dollar for your coffee mug collection.
5. You CAN have too many baskets.
6. Knick-knacks are expensive dust-catchers.
7. So are mini-blinds... except for the expensive part.
8. Why are you saving all those little ketchup packets from Sonic?
9. There are beings living in your closet that shouldn't actually be there.
10. There's a reason you can't find anything.
11. You're never going to find the missing piece for that 1500-piece jigsaw puzzle.
12. More is not necessarily better.
Okay, RESOLVED: This is going to stop now. If I don't live up to that resolution, just pack me up with that old showgirl lamp and ship me off to the 1950's.
I'll keep you posted.
Nazdrovie'
Paczki Puta
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