As I survey the damage that is the state of our basement, I wonder - how they hell did we have that much stuff? I mean, we've barely cleaned out half of the closet and thrown out the trash we wish to dispose of, and it already covers a third of our basement. [Ok, so I'm not eager to share square footage here, so you'll know what I mean if you've seen my basement.]
And the reason? Well, this storage contains items that have been kept since we moved into the house. And this is after an initial reduction when our basement was re-done. So why do we have so much stuff? Well, I'm guessing it's cuz we're a little crazy with the saving for just in case business :P.
Now of course, this is more on my parent's end. Because my role in this whole clean up thing is being the person that's more willing to throw than to save. Which means that even though my mother insists that some things need not be touched, they should be taken and evaluated for their purpose. For example, there are a lot of things we kept for just in case, like my brother's mattress spring box. Now you may be wondering, why aren't we using it? And that's because he upgraded to an IKEA bed frame, which doesn't use a spring box. But we saved it, just in case... And it's finally going in the trash - do you know how much space that thing takes up? We couldn't even access one side of the shelving.
In the same way, my dad had kept the first television he ever bought. A tiny screen, old fashioned, super heavy TV. It's so old, that now that everything has been switched to digital, we can't use it. And it's been saved for so long that we can't just put it in the trash - we have to dispose of it in an environmental safe way (basically, take it to best buy). Sometimes, it just takes someone to point out that we are just never going to use something.
I mean sometimes you don't. Things like old carseat boxes filled with large styrofoam blocks are meant to be trashed, not repurposed, trashed. The only reason these sorts of things remain? Because we haven't bothered to make this closet a user friendly space (it's just a shove in junk kinda place). We basically just don't have easy access to the entire storage space, which means we don't actively use it and things that were meant to only be stored for a short term period became long term residents, cluttering the space. Yeah, we definitely don't need 10 yr old popcorn - I mean I know it never really goes bad... but yeah don't need it or the tin it came in.
Now, I am the trashing warden, but I'm not perfect - I still want to keep the super pack of crayons I had from back in the day and a few other knick knacks. And it's due to the other motivation for saving things - sentiment.
Sentiment is a hard force to battle. Especially because memories hold a lot of sway. When we uncover things like my brother's first shoes, or my first ballet costume there is an unwritten rule of motherly sentiment that means we will need to make place for them in the closet.
Take the ornaments and decorations my mother assembled over the years for decorating the house for fall, Halloween, and Christmas (yes, we decorated for Dec 25th back in the day). For my mom they represent years of collecting cute and beautiful items that she used to make this house her own festive home. And these things, I don't even bother to touch. Because there is no way I can measure their worth, and it's not like she saved our little faux Christmas tree. That's long gone. As long as the collection has been trimmed to the essentials and only the most important, I'll make room for it and leave it alone.
Now there are sentimental things that my mother is willing to let go, that maybe I am not. Way back when my mother had aspirations, like going on picnics. Which means, she had purchased this adorable picnic basket, complete with ceramic plates and mugs. And she was ready to let go that whimsical desire. But see, I totally want to go on a picnic. And while my mother has had to deal with several years of my father not wanting to even think about doing such, I haven't. And well, considering how I have the ability to convince my dad, and my brother and I are at a point in our relationship where we like meandering around in parks, this can totally happen. So maybe just for a little longer we can hold onto this sentiment ^_^.
But see we don't have to worry about sentiment for a lot of this endeavor. The sentiment mainly lies in the small things (just a few large items but that's ok too ^_^). And my role as a regulator and dispassionate 3rd party trasher isn't necessarily as vital because well, remember, the cleanup was not my original idea. It's my mother's.
She knows that there is a lot of junk we don't need that can be donated or trashed. And she knows exactly what. After all, my original role was just to aid with the massive quantity of things in this closet. This is my mother's home, and 98% of everything down there is hers.
My mother was big into arts and crafts and floral arrangements. She has a lot of raw materials and finished products. And she just uses me as hard labor but makes the vital decisions of discard/keep/donate herself. She doesn't need anyone to tell her that things no longer need to be saved or that the sentiment should be let go. And the reason why we still have all that spilled out over the basement? Well, all that's left is to load it all up in the car (or cars considering the quantity and size) and take it away - which will just be plain annoying :P.
In the end, my mother and I play both the warden of trashing and the sentimental hoarder (of course she's more the hoarder and I, the trasher ^_^). Which makes this effort both easy and hard. But considering how we tend to naturally become pack rats, at least halving the mass we've kept in the closet would be a good thing.
Well then, it's back to work folks. This closet isn't going to clear itself!
A few tunes to keep the cleaning vibes going ^_^
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P.S.: I apologize if this post was a bit all over the place... I didn't really know where I was going with this one :P
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