I have a problem with keeping things longer than I should. I’m not a hoarder or anything but I do get attached to things more than most people do. For example, I have had a potato man who my boyfriend gave me for probably around 8 months now. It is growing sprouts and looking kind of rough but I can’t make myself throw it away. Every time I think about it I feel too guilty to get rid of it. To me it is kind of like the drawing that kids give you, they aren’t usually very nice to look at but it’s the thought counts.
A few years ago my Mom gave me what I like to call ‘my boxes of childhood.’ It was everything from old school papers, trophies, t-shirts to my un-sharpened pencil collection. I hadn’t lived at home for a while and she said that it was time for me to be responsible for the stuff. I filled my entire spare bedroom with the boxes and let them sit. I wasn’t ready to go through all of it and have to throw some of it away. After a few months I got sick of looking at all the boxes. I gathered up my courage and started to sort the boxes out. I had a huge box of just trophies. I knew that I didn’t really need a trophy from my 1994 softball season but it just seems wrong to throw it away. After looking at all the trophies and taking a trip down memory lane I decided I would take the face plates off all the trophies. I figured that way I would at least have something other than the ugly team picture of me with gigantic to show for it.
After tackling the trophies I moved onto my t-shirts. I had just about every team shirt from when I started playing sports in the 4th grade through high school. I had kept every regular season and all-star shirt from 10 years of softball. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. In high school I ran played basketball as well as ran cross-country and track. Then there were the 3 million clubs I was in and they all had to have t-shirts for everything. As I looked at all the t-shirt I’d collected I realized there was no way I would be able to get rid of them anytime soon. I have this strange emotional attachment to the shirts. I guess it’s the good memories I had while wearing them. I packed all the shirts back up and decided to tackle that another day.
A few months later I was talking to a friend and she told me how her Mom had painted her old room and put all her high school stuff up in boxes. She said it was hard for her so I didn’t feel so bad about keeping my stuff then. She then told me about how she had turned her old t-shirts into a quilt. My Mom had suggested this idea to me before but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My friend said it was hard to decide but she was happy with the results. I’m still putting it off. The idea of cutting up all my t-shirts just kills me. I mean I’m losing weight there is a chance I could fit into the shirts at some point.
I may not have gotten rid of any of the shirts but I was able to trim down the number of my ‘boxes of childhood’ to four. I think that is a victory. If only I had a trophy to show for it.