Putting the Past Behind You....

I'll admit, I'm sentimental and a hoarder.  Put best, I'm a certified sentimental hoarder and my organizational skills have simply elevated me to the level of certified sentimental hoarder.


I love my stuff.

I love my old stuff.

I love the memories it triggers.  I've been journaling since I was about 12.  I love reading about thoughts I had when I was younger.  And I love the smells and sounds of my childhood.  Coupled with touching an item, it's almost as if I'm magically transformed back to that time, a fly on the wall observing my youth.  Everything seems happy, joyful, and full of great potential.

I was on the drill team in middle school, and I have two pendants to show for it, and a bell we put on our Keds shoes when we marched in the Christmas parade.

I'm also a storyteller.  So a lot of times, holding onto these items is like my way of keeping the props I can use to tell my kids these elaborate stories about Mommy's life growing up.

So when I finished Marie Kondo's book, The Magical Art of Tidying Up, it hit me hard.

I am not letting go of my past.  She advises someone with my sort of "background" so to speak, to touch the item, be thankful for the good memories it brought you, and say your farewell.

Farewell is so harsh.  Can't we just say see you later?

But then reality hits.  Do you want to be surrounded with STUFF of the past, or live in the present, creating new memories?

I'm taking pictures, I'm blogging, I'm doing everything I can to preserve the moments I live.  Even when I tell my husband about the day's happenings, I wonder if I should write it down before I forget.  It's not uncommon for older moms to say, they remember being a mother, but they don't remember the details.  They remember it was hard, but they don't remember why particularly.  I don't want to be that mom.  I'm sorry!  I don't!  I want to remember.  I want to hold on!  I want to preserve those keepsakes.

I was anti Marie Kondo a few days after reading her book, trying to digest it all and make sense of how this would apply to my own life.  I resented her.  I hated that everyone loved her ideas and philosophy so much.  It's just a cult, I told myself.  A phase, I told myself.  It's not me, I told myself.

And then I decided to give it a try.  What was the worst that could happen (besides losing all my precious memories, you ask?!)

I started with jewelry.  In the past, I've gone through deciding what to get rid of.  This time, I took her approach and advice and started with what I wanted to keep.  I picked up every single piece of my jewelry, including items from pre 2000s (yikes, hoarder I told you!) and touched it.  Thought of the good times it brought me, laughed, chuckled, sat in silence reminiscing of the good ol' days.  I was so young.  So thin!  So naive.  The whole world ahead of me.  No kids.  No husband.  No job.  No clue.

And then you know what I did?  I put it in a "discard" pile.  I couldn't believe it.  What was I doing?  I was not a Marie Kondo fangirl!  I was probably the antithesis of a minimalist.  But there I was... not really in my body, an out of body experience where I was sort of like a zombie, doing what I knew would bring me joy (eventually).

A few hours later, a huge pile of jewelry later, and a nice display of what I wanted to keep and what I actually use, I stepped back to take a peek.

Well son of a gun.

That Marie was right.

Shoot.

I had a sudden paradigm shift.  I suddenly couldn't wait to tackle the entire house.

What the heck have I gotten myself into?!

Does this mean I have to stop hoarding?

Jewelry done.  Paper work next. 

This Is Organized Hoarding...

This weekend, we moved our two oldest boys downstairs so our fourth could have his own room and cry it out.  We got tired of him waking up in our bedroom, seeing us, and crying for me (he's not yet weaned... help me!).  With the move, came the opportunity to downsize our toy collection dramatically.  At first, I thought I could get rid of one entire toy storage unit, but instead (and after much pushback from my kids and even my husband who said I might be going too far with minimizing...) I decided to limit it to whatever they could fit into our two storage units.  With shelves and tons of fabric containers, we actually had a lot more storage than our Ikea Kallax (4x2) shelving unit and the Trofast that looks like a step L.  I digress.... You would NOT BELIEVE how many toys we have four years living in Salt Lake near a ton of family.  Trust me when I say I was one of those moms who only had one box of toys for my child for the first two years of his life.  We were in Spokane, not near family, and it was easy living in a small rented space, to limit the toys and enjoy the few we did have.  Or so I thought.

Fast forward to moving to Salt Lake where we were near family.  With generous family living nearby, our kids toy collection quickly grew.  You know how they say growth can be organic?  Our organic growth SKY ROCKETED, and with our family growing from one to four children, there was even more reason for everyone wanting to give us more.

This experience has taught me that despite being an organized person, masked under those OCD neat freak tendencies is actually just a basic hoarder.  Because instead of donating stuff on a regular basis, I thought my "boxes inside of boxes" and "organized self" was doing fine, when in reality, I was just accumulating more storage units.  Cute baskets, wire baskets, white baskets, pink baskets, purple baskets.... clear containers, translucent containers, fabric containers, clear boxes, pull drawers, pails, ... I can't believe how long I could go on for!  Basically anything to help my organized hoarding continue to hoard on.  And that's kind of what happened to our toy collection.  They found new homes, organized homes, and .....

I guess along the way, without life changes forcing you to declutter (going away to college, moving out of my parents' house, getting married, moving to another state for new job opportunities with said husband, etc.) it's easy to just keep everything.  For me, I'm also very sentimental.  I still have old movie ticket stubs that I had to finally throw away when the writing rubbed off and it was hard to see what movie and dates were even on there.  I was really sad when I noticed this.  And my parents weren't any better, I just finally threw away a bundle of hair wrapped in tissue paper with Chinese characters describing it as the first hair my parents ever cut off of my head as a baby.  I am 35 years old.  They gave this to me when I was about 22.  I have kept it until now!  Why?!  I dunno, I guess if my parents kept it for that long, it must have been special, so I just continued the tradition.... so when I look at toys and think about how every single one of my children have played with this, or that they got this for this birthday or that Christmas (yeah, I have a weird memory that's only applicable for useless information like this), I hesitate and then.. I just put it off and here I am.... with tons of toys!

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that this experience so far, of decluttering and organizing my home, has basically taught me that I was a hoarder disguised as an organized person.  An organized hoarder.