Moving advice? Stop storing your memories in boxes.

I am an expert mover. I have not lived longer than a year in any single house since I went to college, including IN college. If there were anyone who could give you tips on moving, it would be me. After moving yesterday for the umpteenth time in my life, the only advice I want to give you is that memories store a lot more easily – and cheaply – in your head.
I didn’t always feel this way. I love to travel, and I used to gather things when I traveled that would remind me of where I’d been. I used to get a kick out of imagining all my worldly possessions in a new place: they were from all over the world, and now here they were, with me, in a new city, state or apartment.
This move was a little different for me. It’s the first lease I’ve signed since I left Bellevue and my job there two and a half years ago, and it’s also the first time I will be utilizing most of my furniture and other possessions that have very neatly organized (and repeatedly reorganized) in my storage unit until yesterday. (Another moving tip? Get boxes with lids or that at least close, and LABEL THEM.) Since Bellevue, I’ve been living in other peoples’ houses and using their furniture and utensils while using the bare minimum of my own stuff: not everyone has a box labeled “Kitchen Bare Essentials,” but I do.
It doesn’t help that I haven’t been feeling well, but the truth of the matter is that when I started opening up all my boxes and going through them, I was amazed at the stuff I’ve been spending good money storing.
I love to cook, but even I do not need 10 mixing bowls. My parents claimed nostalgia over my first pair of skis (Dad) and the first baby dishes (Mom) but didn’t want to haul them around themselves, so they gave them to me. Same goes for some very beautiful but unwieldy painted platters from Mexico that they didn’t want. Come to think of it, that’s why I have a fern the size of a trash can, too.
I can’t blame all of it (or even most of it) on my parents, though. Despite the fact that I purge with every move, I am apparently part pack rat. In the back and bottom of my storage unit is a monstrous trunk, about 100 pounds with no handles, chock FULL of high school memorabilia. I NEVER look in it. The last time I cracked the lid, I threw out a bunch of stuff, wondering why exactly I had kept it. I think I have the idea -- like most people -- that eventually someone else will be interested in the things I have hoarded my whole life, but the truth of the matter is that no one else knows their significance but me. For example, I have been holding onto a really nice expensive coffee maker given to me by an ex-boyfriend, who sadly never understood why I was attached to making coffee with my Melita. Surely I’m not nostalgically holding onto a coffeemaker…am I? Who else but me would even know where it came from, and why I'm packing it around if I never use it?
Don’t get me wrong: I am just as nostalgic as the next person. What I’m realizing, however, after two plus years of living without my prized possessions, is that perhaps they aren’t so prized and necessary after all. Seeing them does not evoke anymore nostalgia than thinking about them did, and I don’t have to pay to store the memories. The only thing that I’m really glad I kept are my old journals, and those are much smaller and easier to carry. They also pack a lot more memories per square inch than the monstrous Mexican rug I have no room for.
Obviously at some point in my life I thought it was worth packing these things into boxes to keep them from breaking and holding onto them until I had a place to put them again. Now that I have a place, however, I’m wondering what exactly that supposed worth was.

Love and moving kisses,
Morgan

Emotional Clutter

Every time I finish a bottle of supplements or pills, I have to fight the urge to keep the bottle. I can think of a million uses for each one: other pills, vitamins or supplements, seeds, spices, paper clips, thumb tacks, etc. My contacts come in adorable little glass bottles with screw-on lids, and I always have to force myself to throw them away after I’ve harvested the contacts out of them. The reason for this is very simple: no matter how many ways I imagine I can use these little containers, the truth is that I won’t use them at all and they will just end up adding to my clutter.

It seems to me that the universe has been trying to send me a message lately: every blog I follow, many people I talk to and a lot of the books I read have mentioned the cathartic effect of reducing clutter. Initially I thought that these messages were meant for someone else; like there was someone that I should pass the message on to. The truth is, however, that the message was for me: the more I looked around my house and my life with clutter in mind, the more clutter I saw.

The reason I didn’t see it the first 100 times I looked was because my clutter is invisible to the naked eye: my clutter is mental. Inside my head are rooms full of stacked junk that needs to be sifted through or simply thrown out. As much as I purge myself of empty pill bottles and contact containers, I stuff the drawers of my memory with useless information that does me no good and actually hurts me when I find it. I’ve been holding onto to memories and their emotional attachments for so long that they’ve become a part of me, as if I were wearing a vest that I have tied these tidbits to as they happened, until I am so weighted down by them that I can hardly walk upright.

With the realization of my emotional clutter came another one: I am so caught up with the clutter in my mind that at some point I began procrastinating on what was physically in front of me. I don’t consider myself a dirty person, but I hate doing dishes so I put them off. My clean laundry pile overwhelms me, so it lives on my chair until half the clothes are dirty and I am unsure of what I’ve washed and what I’ve worn.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not condemning the untidy person. I am simply saying that in my case, my clutter started to physically pile up because my emotional clutter inbox was full. I started viewing simple chores as just another drain of my energy and attention, when the truth is that my attention and energy had already been drained by what was going on inside my head.

I didn’t realize how much more difficult I was making my life until a friend of mine told me about an article she had read about reducing clutter. The article suggested that you set a timer for 10 minutes, and work on reducing clutter – or doing your dishes or folding your laundry, etc. – in 10-minute increments. I discovered – much to my chagrin – that things I put off doing for days because of the time it would take were easily completed within a 10-minute block of time. This is a little disturbing, especially considering that I am notorious for thinking, “Oh that will take FOREVER. I’ll just hop on Facebook for a little while first,” and an hour later I would be strangely frustrated and the dishes would still be dirty in the sink.

Realizing that I could reduce physical clutter so quickly lead to another realization: instead of stuffing my problems into the drawers of my mind, what would happen if I actually dealt with them? I tried it, and you would probably not be surprised to learn, invisible audience, that dealing with my problems makes them disappear: when I open up that drawer now, there’s nothing in it. That’s right: there’s room for today because I’m not constantly confronted with the yesterday.
I am now one drawer down, thousands to go. As overwhelming as that sounds, it’s invigorating to know that I don’t have to open a door and slam it shut again for fear that the contents are going to fall out on top of me, crushing me under their weight. Instead, I can open the door, snatch out a box, rummage through it, and throw it out, knowing that I don’t need what was in it anymore. It will take awhile, but the clutter is already diminishing; there’s now room for sunlight to stream in through the windows.

Love and uncluttered kisses
Morgan

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