Purging

The time has come. Ron and I have been talking about it for months. It won't be easy but the upside is that we can choose to do it slowly, take our time and be thorough. We began our Annual Spring-Cleaning Ritual 2006 on the first weekend in April. We have no end date set for completion because this time we determined and agreed we would be ruthless; no hesitating, no pausing to consider if a stored item should be kept for yet another year. Our theme is, "If we didn’t know we had it, we don’t need to keep it." We have planned three destinations for junk; trash, burn barrel or garage sale. Marginal junk with sentimental value must still meet certain other criteria to remain stored, this category is largely comprised of old photos and child related keepsakes. Everything else is outta here!

I don't have a clue how we have managed to accumulate so much stuff. One box here and another bag there quickly becomes overwhelming piles and precariously stacked cardboard walls. I do know we have made some questionable decisions on our journey and the regrettable physical evidence lurks in boxes remaindered to taunt and remind us and for this reason we have numerous hermetically sealed boxes of unknown contents that have made several moves with us. Our rationale for continuing to provide room and board to these testaments of human folly I simply cannot explain. Perhaps the most egregious of our misguided life choices has been all the money we have wasted to add on storage space to contain our spoils and remnants. If you are contemplating this home improvement, I strongly urge you to reconsider. In spite of the siren call of ample storage it will eventually give you (or your heirs) weeks of backbreaking sorting, handling, laboring over and dumping for no good reason. Who needs that? A better solution is to keep storage space to a minimum thus forcing you to throw as you go.

While pitching, tossing and dragging away, this purging mode has given me opportunity to think about other ways we burden ourselves by clinging to unnecessary junk that clutters and weighs down the forward movement of our lives.

First of all, we hang on to guilt way past its usefulness. Guilt is productive so long as it brings one to correction and rerouting. But guilt for the sake of ongoing beating oneself up eventually destroys all possible change for good because it becomes a crutch of debilitating self-pity. Shine a light on that dark dusty corner and sweep it out.

Then there are the misconceptions we cling to that bear no fruit at all, usually it is about the people we love. Sometimes we so desperately want something to be true we not only invent it we find clever ways to prove it to ourselves. We search deep and wide for justifications to keep our illusions alive. Sometimes even in the face of undisputable truth, we still can't admit what we don't want to believe. But there is no substitute for the truth, however painful. No lie ever spoken can be better or more liberating than truth.

Purging is nothing if not about liberation.

And finally, if we really want to clean out what we don't need anymore, we probably need to empty out those ragged boxes of resentments, regrets and shoulda-coulda-wouldas. "I should have said… I could have done…It would have been this way or that if only…"

Here's the thing about junk – whether it is in your closet or your mind/heart – it has no future benefit so why hang on to it? Boxes of old paperwork will never resurrect a business that didn't make it. Containers of bits of plastic toys will never bring joy to another child. Suitcases with broken latches will never make another trip. No one will ever again use the bowling ball and tennis racket or play the game of Balderdash that has pieces missing. The boxes of scrap fabrics might find a home with someone who makes hook rugs but who knows such a person? Old wrapping paper will never be used to dress up a gift, old cassette tapes will never be listened to again. Boxes of seasonal silk flowers…wait, I still want those…I'll put those in the downstairs storage after I make room by donating the puppet theaters to the Buice Center.

And so it goes, we can't help ourselves. We keep stuff long past its expiration date because we are afraid to let go. We fear we will feel stripped naked but mostly we fear we will have to face ourselves standing in the empty space remaining if we don't have our clutter to cling to and hide behind. The thing about empty space, I have learned, is that it fills up real fast.

The trick is using what you learned from the purging and not letting the old stuff back in.