On cleaning house.

[shadesong]

So. yendi and I are home today.

Understand this - I cannot just be home. I must be Doing Something, because this mess is Driving Me Crazy. So today's project, once yendi and I achieved enough physical competency to Get Things Done, was the closets.

Three closets: his office, the hall, my office. When we moved in, things were just stuffed in wherever they'd fit. But now I want them Organized. I want all of Elayna's artwork together. I want all my craft supplies together. Et cetera.

So we get on that, and it's working very well. We discover that we have enough stuff in the "surprise goodies for Elayna" box that we do not need to buy her anything for Chanukah. For several years.

And then I hit some of my old boxes.... I mean, stuff that's been sealed since Elayna was an infant.

Guidebooks for the adolescent psychiatric wards I was in. My old candy-striper uniform. The leather vest, moccasins, and knife sheath I made in the wilderness survival program. Old yearbooks - I stopped on one girl's picture as I realized that she'd died in 11th grade, and all I had of her to remember her by was, "Stay sweet! Have a fun summer! Xoxo, Love, Risa!".

I Sharpied out all of the pics of me in that yearbook years ago, by the way. Hate photos of myself.

I found my old journals from the aforementioned wilderness survival camp and laughed.... I hadn't realized that LJ was not my first interactive journalling experience. I'd forgotten that I'd been required to write a journal entry every day and then have it graded and commented upon by the staff...

My old baby book, that my parents gave up on after 4 months. Elayna's baby book. Boxes of pictures - didn't go through those.

My desktop appointment-book calendar thingie from Vegas. Yes, I have complete records of who I was having sex with and who I was getting high with 8 years ago.

Not anymore, I don't.

I weeded. Ruthlessly. Kept a bunch of stuff, of course, but most of it went in the trash. I carry a shitload of emotional baggage that I'm trying to shed. Carrying the written maps to my traumas isn't helping. :)

Go through your closet sometime, the boxes you forgot were there. Definitely educational.

Back to work!!

Comments

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

I have things that are out of closets that must be gone through and either discarded or reboxed. Sigh. Not really looking forward to it. I have shoes that should be throuwn out as well. Our closets are insane. We just stuffed things in them from the time we moved in onward--almost 6 years now!

Wow.

[settsimaksimin.livejournal.com]

yay weeding! in most cases, if it's worth keeping just for yourself, it's worth keeping in your head.

i come from very solid Pack-Rat genetic stock, and it's taken years of training to get to this point. however, i had to exempt comics to get here. oops.

i'm proud of my mother, in that she just managed to move from LA to Maine without renting a truck. side-effect: fifty fed-exed boxes of hers in my basement. that's actually a smaller number than i was expecting.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Yes, there is a fourth closet - it's entirely filled with comic boxes. Stacked three deep, floor to ceiling.

I've always been very packratty - I was utterly ruthless today! I'm so proud of me.

‡

[tikimama.livejournal.com]

My mother is arriving this weekend, along with all my childhood and teenage "stuff." I know there are about a million (conservatively) boxes marked "Heather Memory Stuff" which I'm going to love going through. I saved every note ever written to me in high school (of which there are many, no wonder my grades were so bad!), my journals, my poetry (which is truly awful, and rhymes).

I love this stuff, I can't get rid of it.

Though you're probably right, I could get rid of a considerable amount of it. :)

[la-belledame.livejournal.com]

Can you define "physical competency"? No, wait, maybe I don't want to know.

I have to Do my closet. I hate opening the door. It's full of stuff that Doesn't Fit Me Now But Might Someday. My Spouse, whose idea of making room for new books is giving away old ones, gets balky at the thought of me discarding clothes. Go figure.

But I have to do it, and really eliminate anything I WOULDN'T wear if I could fit into it again. I'm redefining my wardrobe to modified Hippie Chick, anyway. I've hit where I want to be professionally, and no one in their right mind would take this job, so I figure I can define my own image by now

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Hee! Physical competency: not a TMI thing. We weren't feeling well this morning is all.

I need to go through my clothes yet...

[kajivar]

I'm in the midst of trying to de-packrat as well. I'll be moving at the end of August, and I'm trying to lighten the load a little (not that, in the end, it will make much of a dent compared to the boxes and boxes of books and fabric I have!). Found lots of interesting old larp stuff, and a whole box of notebooks of stories I wrote in high school. Aiyeee!

[la-belledame.livejournal.com]

Oh cringe. I have a box full of those notebooks, too. In fact, I remember writing some of the passages and thinking how good they were. *Shudder*!

Well, it could be worse. I could still think they're good....

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

I found a story I wrote after reading way too much Ayn Rand. *shudder*

[m0usegrrl.livejournal.com]

heh. if i purged any more of my stuff, i'd have nothing. =)

the scary thing, though, is that i'll prolly still end up throwing/giving shit away when i leave here for Atlanta...