It seems the latest trend catching everyone’s eyes is to declutter your house, your office, your personal space and your personal life.
However, does anybody know how difficult it is to get rid of mementos of your life, your career, your hobbies and your most sacred secrets? It is very difficult.
As I go around the house looking at gifts my children have given us through more than 50 years of birthdays, Christmas, Holidays and all the other festivities they attend and bring home to mom, it is most difficult.
Just think, “where are the red long stem wine glasses we gave you for Valentines in 1982?” or “the green flower vase which belonged to his mom?” or “the quilt we spent three years putting together?”
Never mind I have never used the red glasses, the green vase or the quilt. I don’t even remember what I did with them all. Perhaps I re-gifted to someone else in my haste to attend a party somewhere, sometime ago. I truly don’t know how to answer any of these questions, so I always say: “I have put them away for a special occasion”. Like, what’s not special about today, as my days are already numbered, and I don’t have much time left on this earth. Today is a special day.
So, I continue to look around the house to pin-point those items which are most irrelevant and are only dust catchers. I don’t like to dust, as I usually break a glass or a plate or anything fragile as I place the rag on the items and try to remove the dust particles accumulated in the last 5 years.
On the other hand, I don’t want my children to discover my secret-secret space where I saved my first love letters from boys at school, or a valentine filled with x’s and o’s from another boy I liked in first grade. I can just see the girls laughing and pointing at my coffin making jokes about the time I was the girl in the mini-skirt and the long boots around 1960. I’m scared to think it’s the picture they will place on my casket during the visitation and at the burial site. Horrors of horrors, they will truly enjoy themselves just opening the photo album of my youth.
Continuing on, I must set items aside for the Church Garage Sale soon; get rid of the things I don’t use daily or the things I dislike ever since I received them as gifts. How do you go about deciding what’s good or useful or bad or indifferent? Not easy.
Taking one room at a time, I have a box handy to fill with those items; however, by the time I get them to the garage to save for the sale, I find myself with an empty box once again. I don’t have the heart to dispose of anything which could be valuable to one of the children.
I know, I will leave everything in its place and let them decide when I’m gone forever.
End of story.
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