"Creative mess is better than tidy idleness"
I have been recently accused of being a hoarder and a bit of a slob. My house is full of stuff that I've accumulated over the years. Despite losing much of my personal property in no less than THREE floods at my former residence, I have still managed to retain a plethora of extraneous items.
Oprah once had a guest on her show who was such a hopeless packrat, that she wouldn't even throw out her trash. I can't identify with this individual, as I do love to get rid of my garbage. However I do know what it's like to have an attachment to an inanimate object to the point where you just can't bring yourself to dispose of it.
My parents, on the other hand, are quite the opposite. They blithely toss out their old, unused items, and have little to no regret after doing so.
My stepfather, gawd bless him, wanted to paint my bedroom for me for my birthday. He emptied out the room (which was the room that my boys were currently using when they visited me on the weekends), primed and painted it, then rearranged everything with the help of my mother and a friend. In the end I had my boys' room and they had mine.
There were many items that were sitting out to be put away after it was all done, most of which were toys belonging to my kids. Most of these toys were not regularly played with, as they had outgrown or become bored with many of them. Mike offered to take them to the Goodwill for me, if I wanted to put them in bags and leave them out for him.
In my busy state of living, I don't have time to go through my clutter, which may be part of the reason that I end up with so much of it. I had gotten started on it, but hadn't had the chance to do much. Also, I found it completely overwhelming to sort through it all, as there was so much of it. Mike helped by bagging up whatever he thought was useless and loading it up into his van.
I got home today and saw that pretty much everything was gone, and I panicked. I called my mother who informed me that he hadn't gone to the Goodwill yet, and that I could come over and go through the stuff to salvage what I wanted.
I arrived at my mother's and began going through the bags of stuff that Mike had loaded into the van. Sorting through the toys, games and childhood artifacts I began to sob uncontrollably. I realized that I just couldn't bring myself to let any of it go. You see, every single little broken or forgotten piece of a plaything had a memory attached to it.
My boys are now gone and living with their father and are soon going to be at an age where they won't want to make the trip to see their mother, and will prefer to stay home and hang with their friends. These 'useless' items are all I have left from when they were little and living with me. I wish I could have the cool detachment that my parents have with their stuff, but instead I am sentimentally connected with most of my children's belongings.
Perhaps the clutter I should be focusing more on is the clutter in my heart.
-Bizzy
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