I’ve thrown tons of paper out over the years, but I still have accordion folders tucked away, full of it. It takes a lot of paperwork to be a human. I went through these folders today, a little amused by my small collection of official documents: a car title; a birth certificate; a passport I used for the first (second and third) time this year; report cards; SAT scores; and AP scores I was actually looking for to send to my university. (They still mean something 11 years after I earned them.)
I have about a million stamped metro tickets from Paris, boarding passes and blank postcards from just about every trip I’ve ever taken. I always consider that I’m not one to hold onto many mementos, but I’ve got a bag full of travel stuff and a folder full of school stuff and a wallet stuffed with movie ticket stubs. I have old school projects, a letter I wrote to myself on September 11th and a heartbreaking letter to a teacher who I felt wronged me. A letter I never sent.
All this organizing started with a new bookshelf and finally being able to take down some dusty tomes, previously hidden away in dark closet corners. There wasn’t room for them here before, where everything is a compromise between what I love and what I have space for. What I need, what I want, and what I can stand crowding floors and bureaus and beds and boxes.
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about my purges, about cleaning instead of dealing (or as a means of). My family would laugh as they told you about the countless hours I can spend cleaning one area, sifting through every single piece of paper, folding every article of clothing and arranging everything until it fits just so.
I compartmentalize everything. I mean, I have a box full of the empty boxes of electronics I own, though I couldn’t tell you why I feel compelled to keep them.
I moved my many pairs of short shorts to a newly emptied space in my closet and though it doesn’t get very cold here in south Florida, as I folded each pair, an intense nostalgia for summer overcame me. Bare legs, the smell of sun block and steering wheels too hot to touch.
During the course of this whole project, I went back and forth between realizing I didn’t own a thing and thinking I owned too much, sometimes cresting on the belief that I really just owned all the wrong things. All the wrong things and about 50 dresses.
Usually around this time of year, the excitement of a fresh start begins to bubble. It feels like I’m supposed to be well on my way to resolutions and pronouncements of blogging a lot more here, seriously this time, but that doesn’t seem so important right now. Any fluffy statements about all the things I probably maybe will almost do in the new year feel weak against the knowledge that things are already changing.
They need to, in a lot of ways.
Today, I carved out some space in my life. I threw out what I didn’t need or want. I revisited a history told through paper and pictures. I felt better as I danced and cleaned and controlled what I could. I set up a new bookshelf.
