According to someone who was talking one day somewhere, the state of your desk is the state of your mind. In this case, the clutter of my room is clearly symbolic of the mental burden that I’ve been hanging onto. Or something.
Honestly, I can make a lot of excuses for why I have so much stuff. Listing off a few off the top of my head are: my controlling mother brings things in and takes things out on a whim, I get miscellaneous gifts from friends and family that I don’t always want or need, I’m sentimental, I never know when I need it— I got a lot of stuff ok? But, willing or not, it’s still mine. That means, most of it is my responsibility if I want to keep my room managed.
For background information, I am a young adult still living at home with their parents. Some of it is cultural guilt and other bits of it is that millennials nowadays have little to no hope of becoming homeowners. Things are just too costly for my little entry level salary to handle. Money aside, it’s not easy to enter into the housing market without the right tools, and right now, I am not in reaching distance of those tools.
However, there are many downsides to living with parents who want to maintain a high level of control on their children’s lives. It’s even worse when you are perceived to be a frail female through the lens of old school mothers. That means: no going out with friends (especially male ones) without your boyfriend, asking for permission to go out to begin with, going out only once a week, no stepping out into the backyard without informing your parent, don’t bring in any boxes or packages from the mail before allowing a nose hair singeing amount of disinfectant to be sprayed on by your parent, motion sensing security cameras sending text notifications when you arrive home from work, think about your poor parents’ health if you are too out of control, and of course, no pre-marital hand holding! Just kidding on the last one, maybe.
This means, although I want to declutter, the reality is that all of my trash bags leaving my room can and will be monitored. Most get past the inspection stage, but some do not. There are times in the past when items I’ve clearly thrown away before have been retrieved and moved back into the home in some capacity because “it’s perfectly good, we should save it in case your children want it, or if you want to remember your childhood.”
Mother. I assure you, I do not need a toddler-sized Barbie vanity with a melted crayon in a drawer in my room anymore. I’m willing to make that sacrifice. My unfertilized fetus is probably going to not miss it.
Seriously, it’s a struggle to fight for autonomy. It’s already a struggle to fight against my pre-hoarder mindset; I don’t need items that I’ve let go of to make their way back to me.
Let. Go.
o^o
Regardless, we are going to start off this already incredibly sneezy spring with some cleaning. And thanks to some very motivating episodes of Hoarders on A&E, we’re going to really purge my room with the goal of minimizing things for a potential move.
How are we going to do this? All good ideas start on Facebook.
I saw an old friend do this once. I’ve never seen anyone else do something similar, and I can’t even find this method online. Her idea is simple enough: declutter 100 items by the end of summer. This could mean going one day at a time, or even sitting down to deliberate on what items she really wanted to keep. Her end goal was minimalism so that she could feel more free to travel back and forth between her home and her grandma’s home country. She didn’t need things anymore; she wanted experiences.
As I watched her during the height of Marie Kondo’s organization era, I wanted to do it myself. I didn’t want to feel trapped by items I could replace, things that I don’t need to remember, stuff that isn’t of any value to anyone except for “the thought that counts.” I still don’t truly want those things anymore, but throwing those things away just seem so hard.
I’m the type to keep every birthday card that I get. I have all of my grandma’s freebie stickers after donating to a few charity groups. I’ve got all the little trinkets I get from my friends on their vacations. I feel like a kid, but it’s true. The thought really did count. At the time. But what about now?
Do I really still need a sentimental McDonald’s gift card from my friend from his first paycheck that he gave me for his birthday? Do I want to keep the shirt from an old crush that I asked him for? How about the special limited edition packaging that I got during the launch of a sale— yes, that meant something to me! It’s shiny and I could technically use it to store my keychains in them if I hollowed out the box! I even still have my parents’ first ever cellphone that they got back in the 90s.
Wait.
This is what I’m talking about— that mindset where I have to keep every little thing important to me. Past, present, and maybe future. The reality is sad though: I don’t really need these things. I hold onto a lot of these burdens both in my physical space and in my mind, but at the end of the day, it was all created by me. Minus the stuff that just get deposited into my room without my permission. But the other stuff! That’s all on me.
Taking into consideration the sheer amount of things that are present in my room (and my ability to sneak things out of my house and into a trash can), instead of doing a flat hundred items, I want to do 100 days of decluttering.
Every day, I will declutter at least one item from my room. Every 5th day, I will do more than one, like two or three. However, I want to challenge myself to make some really hard decisions. It would be easy to find 100 postcards or paperclips to get rid of— but I don’t want that. Instead, I will make an honest effort to clear out my room of those “easy” items on my 5th days. Buttons from high school can be thrown out all in one swoop. Old nail polish can all be disposed on the same day. Old receipts.
If I run into more difficult things, I think it would help me to take a picture of it and write about it. After that, I can keep its essence, but throw it away physically. I can thank it for being of use to me at the time, but acknowledge that I am respecting myself and the item by throwing it away or donating it.
I’ll start today once I post this post that I will be posting.
Yeah, it’ll be nice. I think. (ps. steak knife was the only thing that rhymed with life, it’s true, don’t look it up.)
April 14, 2013.
Day 1.
Diving in the Deep 