My Love For Crap

Having been out all week I hadn’t had a chance to pick up the bottle caps that everyone was saving for me.  This morning I went around and picked up the stash.  I have plenty of caps to start on my project and I’m excited to go and pick up the materials needed to go forward with everything.  I really haven’t put a whole lot of thought into it as I usually go on what is in my head.  I don’t need a diagram but it will save explaining it 1,000 times to everyone that asks, “What the hell is that you’re working on now?”

 

I have been slowly working on emptying out the extra bedroom so I can make it into my music/art room.  I have been sorting things for the garage sale my family is having in June.  Most of it though has gone into the garbage.  I mean, I use my treadmill so that isn’t leaving the space but as for all the other junk?  It’s been sitting there on a pile for two years since I moved and if I haven’t used it since then – I’m not gonna, right??

 

I have games I have never played, books I have read once, toys from a collection obsession years ago, papers I think I should keep but never file, blank paper & photo-paper I don’t even have a fricken printer for, every hallway note that I received from friends from junior high and high school (I’m not kidding), art supplies I can’t find because they are piled under crap I don’t use, old notebooks from high school, old bridesmaid dresses from the early 90’s, holiday decorations that I haven’t used since I divorced 10 years ago, picture frames, mats, paper cutters & every kind of magazine I think I need to keep.

 

So why do I keep it??  It’s because I am emotionally attached to SHIT.    Yes, that’s right folks.  I love crap. 

 

While going through everything I had to ask myself:

 

Would this sell at a garage sale?  

Would someone take this if it were free?

 

If I answered no to both questions then it was obvious it was junk.  That sad part about this is that I owned whatever was in question.  Not only do I own the piece of crap poor people won’t even take for free but I can’t toss it out because I have some mentally challenged notion that I need to keep it for sentimental reasons.

 

What am I holding on too?  What am I afraid to let go of?  That material thing isn’t gonna make me feel any better or worse about my life.  I’m not gonna miss it when it’s gone.  I will never think about it.  I know that my memories are in my heart and mind and not in a cold lifeless piece of nothingness.  So then why is my pile still taking up half of my very small rooms’ space?

 

Going from a home with 1400 sq feet, a ¼ acre and an over sized two car garage to a condo with 1200 sq. feet, a 10 x 4 patio and barely a one car stall I have run into space issues. When I moved I gave things to friends and family, I had 3 garage sales and I even put things on the curb but I never had a chance to go through each item I owned because I was so busy fixing the house to sell.

 

Now I have the time and the process has been slow, not only because I have been sick and don’t have the energy but because I can’t seem to say, “I don’t need that anymore.”  At some point, I have too.  I have to face whatever it is that is holding me from a clean spacious home or I fear I will become the most dreaded thing ever – the pack-rat.

 

I can handle being single forever.

I can handle not having children ever.

I can even handle being chubby forever.

 

However, I can’t handle being labeled the crazy pack-rat lady.  This would be the ultimate low for me.  Why?  Probably because this is something I can actually control.  I can’t control a man and his feelings or the way my body was built but I can control this.  I don’t need to have a messy house.  

 

I’m on a mission.  The room is in disarray but still pretty full of junk. The garage sale is the first week of June and I have three boxes packed so far and ready for selling.  That room will be ready for its music/art room transition after that sale.  I guarantee it or my name isn’t Alfred E. Newman…