Last Chance to Win a Kindle/Hokey Pokey Wednesday: Hoarder Nation

I'm trying to clean up my life. Really.
Not that it's dirty. But it's packed.
I'm not a hoarder like the ones you see on television. But I save things. It's hard to let go.
I know I'm not alone.
We are a nation of hoarders. It's just that everyone has their own degree.
Why do we attach ourselves to certain things?
Fear of loss, comfort, desperation, laziness, compulsion...I think these all have a hand.
We are a nation that affixes our happiness to our possessions.
For me, the number one reason is sentimentality. For example, I find it so hard to get rid of anything remotely connected to my children. Today I went through a basket of stuffed animals and asked my son Casey which ones he wanted to keep. Whenever he said to toss one, I'd say something like, "But I bought this giraffe for you when you were sick. See its big, sad eyes?"
And Casey would say, "I don't remember, Mom. Just ditch it."
It's like I don't want to lose the memory.
My older son is fantastic at letting go of things. He is a neat freak, and he knows the trick is to not let anything lay around.
I want to be like that. As a matter of fact, I'm not letting anything new accumulate. But the old stuff is hard to get rid of.
I read a great tip in a magazine: Take a picture of the things you love before you get rid of them. I'll probably snap a shot of the giraffe before he goes bye-bye.
Another huge problem I have is papers. First of all, there are manuscripts. I certainly don't need them - I have them on the computer! But you try dumping your manuscript in the trash. It's like thowing your baby away.

Great minds think alike: Albert Einstein also had a cluttered workspace!

Then, I have critiques. I already went over them, but I like to keep the comments "just in case." I also like reading the compliments.
I have notebooks filled with notes from writing conferences, but never look at again.
I have piles of research for my American Revolution books. (This I hope to box up and put in the attic.)
I have receipts and statements...I have Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons up the wazoo...all these things I know I need to file, but God help me, I don't want to take the time to!!!
I have mugs from everywhere I've ever been. I don't use them - I display them.
I have soooo many pictures...It would probably take a solid year to but them in albums (I went through a scrapbooking phase, and have two completed pages, and all the materials.)
I have THINGS...little things that have captured my interest, or mean something to me.
I have my kids' art work from all the years gone by...Including things far from original or creative. Like a foam plaque with a leprechaun, rainbow and pot of gold that one of my kids glued together.

Oh, and I have boxes...lots of decorative boxes and bins to organize things in...and they are EMPTY!!!

I also have many books - far more than I've ever read!!!

All this, even though I've been cleaning out. I just don't know how I'll ever get done with it all, because I can't devote my life to cleaning up my prior messes.

I'm trying to do a little each day.

And I am proud to have halted the madness.

It feels so cruel to get rid of things, but now I view it as survival of the fittest. It's me, or them.

A cluttered life is an imprisoned one.

I deserve to be free.

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What Remains

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Hokey Pokey Wednesday – when we do the dance of life ;)

This is something I wrote a few years ago, but I thought it appropriate for my “first dance.” I don’t know why – but something about it really strikes me, just as much as when I wrote it.

Let me know what you think!

***

My friend Pascale moved. We started carting boxes over to her new place in my mini-van on Friday. On Saturday, the furniture and electronics went in the moving truck. By Saturday evening it was down to those vague things no one ever wants to deal with. You know, the stuff you’ll eventually need but at the moment you’re too friggin’ exhausted to care. Poor Pascale was running on empty, going back and forth, back and forth through her old living-room, trying to sort things out and cope in general, when I became fixated on the pile.

If you’ve ever moved, you’ve seen that pile on the floor. It’s all those scraps, remnants of the moments lived in-between those walls. It’s that mound of crusted objects encased in dust and dirt and pounds of pet fur.

At first glance you think it’s garbage; in fact, it’s your life.

It’s the discards we found easier to kick away or ignore than pick up; it’s the stuff we thought we’d get back to later; it’s the little things we thought were too small to matter.

It’s our lost episodes.

The first things I noticed were the scattered pencils and pens. Over a dozen in various sizes and colors –  dropped, rolled and forgotten long ago. How easy it is to replace a pencil, and yet how crucial a well-placed one can be.

The writing utensils roped me in, but then I saw the eggs. Those plastic eggs people fill on Easter and hide for the kids. I’ll bet anyone who celebrates Easter has a couple of these babies lurking in their corners – I know I do, as I’ve come across them at times. But the astonishing thing was that there were two pink and two orange. They matched and could be put back together, if so desired. I’ve never found more than one half of an egg at a time at my house, and it was usually cracked.

By then I was sucked into the pile, examining items critically and jotting my observations with a pencil I’d plucked. For paper, I used Pascale’s junk mail. Her daughter Amanda joined me, while Pascale scampered and scurried through the house trying to work things out.

We poked through the filth, exposing such treasures as a Milk Dud - unwrapped and hairy; an elastic hair band, and a battery. Amanda liked the battery, and reminded me to write it down several times.

There was an empty candy wrapper with a happy face, and one with the candy still inside. A dual-tipped highlighter. A connector for a glow necklace. A pair of green swim shorts with Hawaiian pattern.

One soccer cleat. Crumpled pages from a magazine. A piece of red curling ribbon – for luck, I supposed.

I found a key, and realized it was for handcuffs – there was something perversely poetic in that, I thought.

“Ooh, there’s a leaf,” Amanda exclaimed, as Pascale flitted by again.

Then came repulsion – I found a snail shell. Amanda said, “Gross! I can’t believe you found a shell from a snail. Who has snails?”

I said, “You do.”

A late discovery came from Amanda. It was a cat’s toy mouse, well camouflaged by dust tufts and mega fur. And even later she made another startling find, crying out, “Oh, Selene! There are two mice!” It was like we’d unearthed a cousin of T-Rex’s.

Not to be ignored, the dogs also had their contribution to the pile: twelve pieces of kibble – seven large brown, one medium red, and four small assorted.

There was a screw, three tacks, and a black twist tie.

A blue hair bead, even though no one living there had ever beaded their hair.

A sheet of fabric softener, and an energy guide for their air conditioner. They had a very efficient unit – nine point seven out of ten. I ran out of room on the junk mail and started scrawling on the back of the energy guide.

There was an unopened package of earphone foam replacements; and an actual piece of an earphone, which was apparently magnetic because a staple was stuck to it. There was a flower-shaped ring my son Casey left there a while back – he’d brought it with another ring, and asked Amanda’s opinion about which one to give to his girlfriend. She’d picked the one not in the pile.

We sifted and sifted while Pascale preped for exodus, muttering unintelligible words and at times seeming to cluck.

The thing about the spare change was the lack of it. Two quarters and two nickels. That has to be well below the national pile average, unless someone beat us to the rest of the bounty. Brother, can you spare a dime?

I said to Amanda, “These are the things everyone finds their homes when they leave. In the end, we’re all the same.”

She said, “Not everyone has snails.”

I said, “How do we know that?”

It’s my contention that everyone does have snails – at least one; or something grotesque and fascinating like that. Something sliming away in the night while they sleep. Something small and a bit icky. It’s one of the common denominators of being human.

We found a flexible CD protector, a mysterious black and white plastic thing, and a black plastic something Amanda picked out of the rubble, saying her brother Tommy needed it or his X-Box. We found a votive candle in a plastic holder, which she also put aside. Then she found some plastic pieces missing from her dresser. What a bonanza for Amanda!

We found brown lip gloss – “Not very attractive,” said Amanda, dropping it back in.

A shard of wood.

A water bottle cap, and a Bud Light cap.

“There’s that snail again,” said Amanda, with renewed revulsion.  She smashed it.

A crystal bead from a bracelet, another battery, endless rounds of plastic ammunition for air-soft guns.

And dust. Lots of dust.

This is what remains.

As I write this it occurs to me that it’s the same in writing as in leaving. The truth lies in the details mixed in the pile on the floor.

Meanwhile, Pascale had gotten it all together – whatever she’d been doing. She was through. “You done with that garbage?” she asked us, holding up her little blue broom and dust pan. Her facial expression said, "You're done with that garbage."

“Yes,” I said. You don’t want mess with Pascale when she decides it's time to go.

With quick precision, Pascale swept up our “fun,” as Amanda called it. I thought of it as something else, but what I couldn’t say. Pascale dumped it into a big black garbage bag and hit the light switch. The room went dark. We exited, stage left.