Keep or Toss

Moving is a big project. I am calling it a project because I am literally using the same project management software that we use at work to keep track of everything I need to do for my move at the end of the year.

Being a fairly useless “adult”, I have backup flying in to assist me with the big parts such as the actual packing and unpacking. My mom and stepdad are visiting twice in a matter of weeks to help me. My dad and his pickup are on call, and he is going to be taking care of the cat for a few weeks during the whole process. My sister and family are also on call while they are visiting out east during the holidays. And I have multiple friends who have lovingly volunteered to be my moving crew. I do not lack for a village.

But there is a lot of work to do before my angelic helpers arrive. Over the nearly eight years that I have lived in my current apartment, I have accumulated a lot of stuff. Just so much crap tucked into every nook and cranny of this place. It doesn’t help that I’m also very comfortable among piles of clutter. I’d love to be a neat and tidy person, but it’s so much easier to just leave things in a pile to be dealt with “later”. Well, later has arrived.

The other day I was putting clean laundry away and while trying to jam too many clean leggings into an already full drawer I was struck by the De-clutter Bug. I emptied the entire drawer onto the floor in front of my dresser and went through each item asking, “Keep or toss?” The majority of items were tossed. I threw them into the next room into one of two piles: a neatly stacked pile to donate, and a literal heap in the middle of the floor of items so worn thin that they would do no human or animal any kind of service. Two drawers were cleaned out in this manner in a matter of minutes. There remain three drawers and two closets that need to be attacked in a similar manner.

Then there are the books: two tall bookshelves from IKEA full of books. Some are obvious keeps: favorites that I’ve read multiple times and will continue to read for the rest of my life. Some are ripe for tossing, such as books that I’ve read once and either didn’t enjoy that much or enjoyed but will definitely never read again. But then there are those that have no obvious destiny. There are some books that I’ve read and will probably never read again, but were interesting enough that I could see myself going back through them in the future to check some fact or story point. There are the books that I remember from my childhood that I almost never look at, but want to keep around in case I find myself in a nostalgic mood. Of course there are the books I have that I haven’t actually read yet…that’s a long list. And then, of course, I have my pile of yearbooks from middle and high school. Every so often I think about getting rid of them because I never go back and look at any of the signatures in them. The only reason they remain on the shelves is for those moments when I’m trying to remember something about a fellow student or if I’ve forgotten a teacher’s name. They are more reference book than anything else, but if I got rid of them I’d have no source for that information.

The mountain of craft supplies definitely needs to be sorted, organized, and thinned out. Also I need some sort of ankle-worn monitoring device that sends a beacon to family and friends when I enter a craft store so that they can call and admonish me for purchasing more items that I Do Not Need. (But I wants them, my preciousss…)

One more big decision involves the artwork that I have on my walls. There is a lot of it between family photos, pieces I’ve made, and art that I’ve purchased mostly at various comic conventions. And this is where it gets tricky because some artwork that I really enjoyed when I bought it, I’ve grown out of for lack of a better term. The tv show I loved enough to have five framed pieces on my walls about it? I haven’t watched it in years and don’t care any more. I don’t think I’d even enjoy the show if I watched it again. In truth I only even watched that show because it connected me with my friends and boyfriend at the time.

There is artwork and a fair amount of stuff that I definitely only bought because I thought it would impress my friends at the time, or make them like me more. Unfortunately that used to happen a lot, so there is lots of stuff that I look at and not only ask, “keep or toss?”, but I’m also re-evaluating my motivation when I purchased each item. Was it really for me, or was I trying to buy someone else’s opinion of me? None of that shit with its bad vibes is welcome in my new home. Only items that genuinely bring me joy or that I need to exist as a human being are invited into my new place.

Moving is a big project and it’s not as simple as packing up and relocating stuff from one place to another. There are years of accumulated stuff to go through, which is often more complicated that just “keep or toss?” My list of to-dos remains long even though we’re less than a month from packing up this place. Part of it is that I’m busy but also lazy and want to enjoy my limited free time. But mostly I’m avoiding the hard work; not the actual physical work, but the decisions that so often involve looking back at previous decisions that I’m not proud of when I put someone else’s needs or opinions over my own. That used to be my default setting; only in the last couple of years have I switched modes to automatically put myself first.

This move is coming at a good time and affords me the opportunity to make a fresh start in a number of ways, but there is no such thing as a completely clean slate. Everyone moves in with a little baggage. The effort to clean out is worth it if it means I bring less negativity into my new home.

Which means, really, that I should be getting more craft supplies, right?