It’s amazing how much stuff a person accumulates in a given year. I’ve been living in D.C. for the past seven years and I have tons of stuff…furniture, school papers, clothes, and just random stuff that I don’t have space for. I guess the real question is not why do I have so much stuff, but why have I allowed it to accumulate in my home--why don’t I just purge what I don’t need?
Putting aside all my ideas about unsustainable American consumerism (which, you better believe, I will share soon), I think that, for me, its about not wanting to let go of stuff that I feel I might need one day (what my mom calls the 1930s-Depression syndrome) or that someone has given me. For example, there are about 6 boxes of stuff from my school days that I haven’t been able to purge in a while. I just feel that I will need or want it one day. All the notebooks, tests, handouts, and other things from classes gone by. Then, there are those things that I have been given and don’t really use or need anymore, if ever all. For those things, I just feel bad about purging something that a friend or family member spent time and money on.
To be honest, I’ve always been a packrat. When I was a kid, I used to mull the Goodwill piles during spring-cleaning at my home. And many things that my parents or sister “threw out” ended up in my room. But, now that I’m 25, I want to change. I feel it’s important to clear my home and my mind of clutter. So, over the next few months, I’m going to really concentrate on reducing the six school boxes to four (a seemingly huge feat) and clearing from my shelves and closets stuff I really don’t need.
Don’t worry, everything will go to the right place—the recycling center, Goodwill, and sanitary landfill.
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