(no subject)
I finally got around to cleaning my house. It's kind of odd given that I live in the smallest room that I have the most stuff. Right now the bottom floor is entirely mine and the floor is lined with all my old and new uniforms, my massive desk, DVDs and CDs stacked waist heigh, and recording equipment. I never really thought of myself as a pack-rat, but man, I must just be lazy. I don't know any other way to explain while I still have two year old receipts and pay stubs from a place I haven't worked in 14 months.
I should mention that the reason I'm cleaning isn't entirely selfish (as it should be, I mean, you're supposed to want your space clean, right?). Steph is supposed to fly down this weekend and I'm supposed to play host to her and her best friend from North Carolina, and gee, I'd rather they not see my Lion King boxerbriefs waving to them from my bedroom floor. So now I'm busily organizing the mess, moving piles of mess to other piles of semi-related mess. I have a mess for computer stuff, a mess for clothes, a mess for all the baubles I've picked up traveling, and a mess for relationship detritus.
The hardest thing for me is parting with all the little things. I don't really care about money or how much objects cost, but I'm always emotionally attached to the little objects I pick up from people. Things like the little plastic cows from a restaurant in Buenos Aires or the love notes written to be from ingenuous gay men from Grand Central, those things are part of my story right? That's like, tactile autobiography there, like when I die I'm going to be sequestered in a room with nothing to tell my story except for the stones my grandmother and I collected when I was 10 and she gave back to me before she died. I imagine my kids going through all my stuff, tired of the crap I put them through when I was alive and dumbfounded at the sheer amount shit I preserved, and all the while my Star Wars Force-Ghost is screaming at them that it's my stuff, it's me.
Really though, now it's just separating wheat from chaff. You just set your priorities and save the loveletters, the small gifts you traded with people, and the bits of string you tie around your fingertips to remind yourself not to forget someone.
I should mention that the reason I'm cleaning isn't entirely selfish (as it should be, I mean, you're supposed to want your space clean, right?). Steph is supposed to fly down this weekend and I'm supposed to play host to her and her best friend from North Carolina, and gee, I'd rather they not see my Lion King boxerbriefs waving to them from my bedroom floor. So now I'm busily organizing the mess, moving piles of mess to other piles of semi-related mess. I have a mess for computer stuff, a mess for clothes, a mess for all the baubles I've picked up traveling, and a mess for relationship detritus.
The hardest thing for me is parting with all the little things. I don't really care about money or how much objects cost, but I'm always emotionally attached to the little objects I pick up from people. Things like the little plastic cows from a restaurant in Buenos Aires or the love notes written to be from ingenuous gay men from Grand Central, those things are part of my story right? That's like, tactile autobiography there, like when I die I'm going to be sequestered in a room with nothing to tell my story except for the stones my grandmother and I collected when I was 10 and she gave back to me before she died. I imagine my kids going through all my stuff, tired of the crap I put them through when I was alive and dumbfounded at the sheer amount shit I preserved, and all the while my Star Wars Force-Ghost is screaming at them that it's my stuff, it's me.
Really though, now it's just separating wheat from chaff. You just set your priorities and save the loveletters, the small gifts you traded with people, and the bits of string you tie around your fingertips to remind yourself not to forget someone.