Have
you seen the show “Clean Sweep” or “Hoarders”? I'm not quite
that bad, but I'm a clutter-bug, a girl with many piles in many
places. There's never enough time to finish whatever project I'm
working on, but then I need the table for something (say, serving
dinner) so I sweep the paper storm into a pile and put it somewhere.
This event then repeats itself over and over. Pretty soon all the
chairs in the “pretty room” (that's what my boys called it when
they were young and it stuck, it's just a living room, but no toys
allowed, those go to the family room, or their own room) are stacked
with precariously perched piles of paper. Deciding what to save, to
what to file, what to shred and what to just recycle seems like a
daunting task when you survey the scenery.
The
problem isn't so much lack of motivation (because clutter drives me
nuts and makes me feel even more claustrophobic) or time (I'm no
longer homeschooling {yippee yippee joy joy dance}) it's the
deciding. Am I ever going to look at this program again (like the
one I got from attending The Nutcracker where my friends daughter was
dancing)? No, I'm not. But suppose her mother is making a scrapbook
for her when she becomes a prima ballerina one day. She might
need it if she lost hers. So give it to her, you say. No! She has
one! She doesn't need mine now, but boy would I be the hero if she
needed one later and I still had mine!
I'm
thinking you're catching on to my dilemma here. Why save that letter
from Grandma? It's just taking up space. You know she loves you,
and you love her. Now fast forward to her funeral, and you're making
those posters of the deceased's life, and there is a letter she wrote
to her granddaughter. In fact, it's the last letter she ever
wrote because very shortly after that, Alzheimers stole her brain.
It's now a precious keepsake, and you're so happy to have it.
What
should I save of mine? I have ticket stubs: first time I saw Bruce
Springsteen in concert, front row at the downtown historic movie
theater where my uncle took us to the premiere of “The Empire
Strikes Back.” I know I don't need them. I have the memories.
Well, for know. With my medical issues, I don't know how long until
someone steals MY brain.
Then
I fast -forward to some future relative of mine, sorting through all
my piles, and finding those ticket stubs and thinking, “Wow, she
was around for THAT!” I know it's not a moon landing or anything
of that scope, but it was an occasion that was important to me.
For my last point, I do have a counter-example. I write poetry. Have since I was in about 5th
grade. I have journal after journal with poems and rants and raves
and excited to just be alive entries when love was in full bloom.
Those I'd rather others not see. As a human person, I'm not perfect,
and some of the events described in detail aren’t for consumption
by family members. Skeletons in the closet, described in the
journal.
Ok, just one more example. When my mother was in college, a friend
dragged her to hear some poet read his poems in one of the lecture
halls on campus. I really wish she'd saved the program. It was in
the early 60s, and the poet was Robert Frost.
How
do you handle this issue? What do you save? What never makes it
home? How do you store the treasures? I'd love to hear what you do.
