Okay, sorry, but I just had to sneak in some cheeky, off-beat humor about this week's topic: Keepsake or Clutter? How do you decide what to keep and what to toss??
I really believe that as humans we all have at least a slight tendancy to save things, which oftentimes becomes too many things. We live in a retail society. It is so easy to find things all the time that we want to buy. But with the wonderful feeling of finding that great buy, there is also that dreadful feeling of finding a space for it. For me, this is usually seasonal things like home decor items. I seem to come across lots and lots of great seasonal home decor and I love buying and having it...at least that year, until I find something seemingly better for that same season the following year. I have plenty of these items already, but each year I seem to add to it until I just have too much of these things. That is something that I have to proactively think about each time I find myself meandering the seasonal aisles of my favorite stores: do I already have this or something already to serve as good of a purpose? Do I really need this? Where will I put this? When the season is over, where will I store this?
Things I Keep
Over the years, especially during the college years, I accumulated things that at that particular moment, felt like life-long 'must-have' items. However, that stack of things included such ridiculousness as every paper I ever wrote (which is a lot...considering I have a bachelor's degree in English Education), newspapers, magazines, books, coats/jackets, teaching materials, things I could potentially use later, etc... However, I have since had to take a more critical look at these things and pare down what I keep and what I get rid of.
Things I have kept from college now fits into a flat plastic tote that would fit under a bed for easy storage. Except for the books, that is. Still have a LOT of the books, but as far as other random things, I have really minimized it down over the years.
Of the things from colllege, I decided to keep only the documents that were of some personal or historical value. This would include a small sampling of the best of the papers that I wrote (or ones that I put the most thought or effort into writing - because let's be honest, there were plenty that were written in the wee hours before class with the printer ink still drying as I turned them in). Early on, I also came to the conclusion that there was ablsolutely no logical reason or justification for keeping the notebooks and folders from my college classes. That just took up too much space from the get-go, so they got tossed. I have never needed them, so that was a great choice of things to toss. I also still have a lot of the cards, notes, and such that my mom mailed to me while I was away at IU. The keeper pile also includes the Business Law quiz that I was taking at the exact time that the September 11 attacks happened. I will never forget, at that moment before hearing about the attacks, that quiz was the most important thing happening...until I heard. Oh, how horrible it was to find out what happened while I was taking that quiz. The very next time I had that class was two days later, so we were all still reeling from the news, and we all awkwardly waited for class to begin knowing that is what we were doing when it happened. The professor wallked in and tossed them on the table and simply said, "here are the quizzes...not that they are important." He is right, they became insignificant to what the country was going through, but, I have kept that quiz, if for no other reason to remind me that something you think is the most important thing right now can quickly become the most insignificant thing in the grand scheme of life.
I also still have the IU Student newspaper announcing the firing of basketball coach Bobby Knight. I am not even much of a basketball fan, but Bobby Knight was a legend at IU, so since I conveniently have the newspaper from the university from which he was fired, I figure I may as well hang on to it...who knows.
Now back to the books. Oh, the books. Confession: I have a really hard time forcing myself to get rid of any books. Even at the end of the semester when I could sell them back for fast cash after finals, I still carefully picked and chose which ones I thought I should keep and which ones I could part with for pizza money...literally, I once sold back some of my books because I really wanted some extra cash to order a pizza the evening I finished my last final for that semester. I cashed in my thick, heavy volume of Shakespear literature at TIS Bookstore, and cleared just enough to pay for the last pizza that Pizza Express delivered that night. They cut off deliveries very early that evening due to a snow/ice storm that was moving in, and I got the very last pizza they delivered that night. Shoo...just under the wire! The irony here is that a couple semesters later I had to REBUY that exact same big, heavy volume of Shakespeare for my second semester of Shakespeare Literature. Dammit. But I learned, and didn't sell it after that semester so I would never have to buy another piece of Shakespear literature. Plus, it had all my class notes written in it and that alone has served of zero value in the subsequent years of my life! I still have that second copy I got. I haven't been able to part with it, probably because it reminds me of the cute and funny story of when I really wanted pizza money and sold the first one.
I also have a handful of things of the dogs' that I keep. From Watson there are a few of his favorite toys and his collar and tag that I have in a special box that I bought to keep his things in. Since we don't have our Watson anymore, at least I have a lot of photos and a few of his favorite things to remember him by. And speaking of dogs' things, I now have a new one to add. Eli learned to swim this week. All on his own. Mark threw a ball out in a stream for him and Austin to go retreive and it went a little farther than they could wade out to get it and Eli was determined, so when it got too deep for him to wade, he kept going and started swimming for it! It was a proud moment for Mark and I - my heart swelled a hundred times bigger watching him. He brought that ball back and after playing with it a bit more, I got ahold of it so I could keep it and always have a memento of when we were so proud of him for being brave!
Things I Toss/Donate
I have recently come to terms with just clearing out clothes that don't fit anymore or that I know deep down that I will never wear again. About a year ago, after my weight being up and down and up and down, I decided that having the teeny tiny clothes that I could once wear in the closet staring at me everyday was just too depressing; I decided I needed to do a major purge. So, after bagging them up, I had every bit of three giant garbage bags stuffed full of great clothes that I needed to never see again. So, I donated them to a better cause than collecting dust inside my closet.
Coats and jackets are another thing I have way too many of - that is one of my weaknesses; for some reason that I don't fully understand, I LOVE buying new jackets and coats. Since fashions change from year to year, that is a grand reason to justify getting them...right?? Just agree with me on this. As a result, I have a ridiculous amount of them, winter coats especially, that I need to donate. Some of the coats are too small or no longer fashionably appropriate for my "grown-up" life, so I just need to get rid of them. Seriously. I could provide coats for an extended family of Eskimos. Seriously. I just need to get them to a more useful home. People in less fortunate situations need coats every year, and it is selfish of me to keep these coats collected up in a closet knowing I will never wear them. The funny thing is, that even though I buy all these jackets and coats, there is one I still keep going back to. A grey wool pea coat that I bought in college for $25 off the clearance rack at Old Navy one year. Yeah, I still love that coat and always default back to it after I grow tired of my most recent coat purchase. All I have to do is pair it up with a new scarf and glove set each year, get it dry-cleaned at the end of each winter, and voila...its appearance is refreshed, and it is as good as new!
The Basement
We all know the best parts and perks of home ownership. However, the slightly darker and more sinister side is that space that most houses in the mid-west have that sits directly under the main part of the house...yes, you know what I am talking about...<insert music from a horror film here>...the basement. It is just a big space...for stuff, right? Well, ours has been just that. There have been times where I avoided going down to the basement because of all the stuff. But, to our credit, it was also being used as a shop for some things that my husband works on. At some point, it became abundantly clear that we needed some type of space dedicated to just his projects and tools and things like that. So, we built a 1500 sq foot shop for just that. So, out of the basement went all the tools, saws, sawdust collection sytems, shop vacs, lawn maintenance equipment, and dirt bike & dirt bike accessories. Oh, the open space of the basement once all that stuff got moved! We even had a little part of the basement we referred to as 'the garage' and it is now almost empty because all that stuff went out to the shop. So now, we are down to just one corner of the basement that we try not to think about. That corner of the basement would be a hoarder's dream come true. I say there just hasn't been time to go through it all, maybe that is true, but deep down, part of me knows that I just don't want to deal with all that stuff and what to do with it all. Woof. This part of the basement story is to be continued...
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