Clutter - Our Ties to Useless Junk

Every so often I go on a cleaning binge. having decided that I've finally had it with clutter. With that thought in mind, I set out to clear my house of all 'useless junk'. The problems with clearing your home of 'useless junk', however, is we have so many reasons for keeping the junk;

1. One man's junk is another man's treasure
2. Emotional ties to useless junk
3. I might need that someday tie to useless junk
4. I'm so unorganized, I stashed this someplace then forgot I had it!

Once in a great while, I decide to clean off my husband's desk or clear out his side of the closet. Inevitably, about two days after I do this, he can't locate some Very Important Item and seeks me out to help figure out what has happened to his stuff. I generally try not to throw his things out unless I know for certain it isn't something Very Important. He likes to say that I 'organize things out of existence.' This is true. I am very good at this. But they're not really gone, they're usually stuffed in a box in the back of the closet where, one day, our great-great-great grandkids will discover it and become very emotionally distraught over the realization that they are of the same genetic makeup as the people who would keep so much useless junk.

The second reason we can't throw things out is our emotional ties to this stuff. I have drawers and boxes filled with travel brochures, match books, trinkets, rocks, tiny bottles, feathers, etc. All of these things were collected by either myself or my children in our travels to various places. I am not a scrapbooker, but I have good intentions of someday assembling this wonderful stuff into a scrapbook. I have two books, one for each of my children, with things just crammed in between the blank pages. My kids are in high school. Sadly, they will never have a scrapbook. I hope this doesn't damage their psyche too much.

Speaking of my kids, my daughter is a bag lady. No, she doesn't live on the streets, she collects bags, purses, totes and the like. We recently cleared out her room. Let's just say she could open her own Bag Boutique. I thought perhaps she would want to take a lot of the bags to Goodwill, but she stuck them in a box and stuffed the box in a corner of her closet. (See I told you it was genetic.)

I love the really useless things we hang onto, like empty boxes. I went through my house after Christmas and tried to toss the empty boxes. But there are boxes like the one your new DVD player came in and you don't dare toss it until you're sure the thing is going to work properly and you won't have to take it back to the store. So, three years later, it will probably still be sitting there, harboring a very healthy dust mite colony.

I love the forgotten junk. Sometimes this kind of 'junk' is the best. When we travel, I often stash toiletries and other small items in zip lock bags. During a recent cleaning binge I came across one such bag filled with tubes of lipstick, lip gloss and small bottles of sunscreen. The sunscreen was way beyond the expiration date, so I tossed it. But one of the lipsticks was a very nice treasure--a favorite that I thought I had lost and could no longer find in the store. This was a very good find. Almost like finding money in an old Winter coat.

Sometimes we have to break our emotional ties to our junk and just toss it, give it to friends, or give it to charity. I don't consider myself a collector, yet I have dresses in my closet that I wore in high school, purses I will probably never use again, and shoes with heels so high I couldn't possibly wear them without risking a life-threatening injury. Yet these things still sit, enshrined in my closet, just like the one hundred year old clothing that is stored in my attic from our dead ancestors.

Oh well, you can't fight genetics. Besides, it will keep future generations entertained and might even prove to be valuable antique stuff they can sell on e-Bay.