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Getting Ready for 2014: One Method of Decluttering

Picture of a teapot shaped like a dead clown.
I have a photo of this fabulous object, a clown teapot with cups shaped like clown heads, each with xes for eyes, as though the principal clown had slain all his enemies and taken their severed heads in the process. Therefore it's okay I didn't buy it. Someone else gets all the joy.
We’ve (as in two humans, two cats, a briefly lived betta, and assorted temporary insects) lived in this space since 2001. While I’ve decluttered and cleaned before, cruft inevitably creeps in. An odd little ball colored red, white, and blue. Countless keys. Sharpies in a rainbow of colors. Twists and ties and clips. Twenty years after my D&D days, there’s still a few polyhedrals rolling around.

Many things have memories attached, and discarding the object sometimes feels like discarding the memory. The paperweight I bought in Prague while traveling to train Eastern Europeans about network security software. A tin butterfly from our time in Mexico when I was a child. The sequinned baby shoes I use as a prop in the flash class. I feel as though if I put them aside I may lose the thing that triggers the memory.

While I’m not ditching everything, a lot of these are getting digitized. I take a few pictures with my camera and stick it aside. Here’s an example of a book I’ve been carrying around since high days. My paternal grandmother got it for me when I expressed an interest in folk tales and folk songs. I drew on it heavily when writing songs for Armageddon, sometimes adapting songs outright, otherwise creating ones patterned after the originals.

It’s a hefty doorstop of a book. I suspect I’ll be able to find this knowledge, or comparable stuff, on the net whenever I need to. But at the same time, the object holds memories: sitting in my room in high school, reading through it, while the rain drummed on the roof and the locust tree outside my window tapped its long fingers on the glass, for one. Performing songs based on it as my bard on Armageddon, purple-haired, seemingly bemused but secretly sharp, Karaluvian Fale. I take more than just a photo of the dustjacket: one of the inside so I can see the font, another of an illustration, one of an enigmatic and very scrawly note. Enough that I’ll be able to evoke it, access those memories again if I want to.

What’s the best way to preserve these images? I haven’t gotten that far yet. For now I’m saving and tagging, and trying to shrink down the mass of physical stuff attached to my life.

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2 Responses

  1. That clown teapot is the most distressing thing I’ve ever seen 🙂
    I totally know what you mean about the memory triggers. I no longer put photos in photo albums because I need them out, in front of me, where I can see them, in order to remember. So I collage everything and hang them on the walls. Photo collages of trips, family members, etc. are what I hang on my walls instead of art work. It’s like an external memory drive for my life, I guess 🙂

  2. Oh, I understand, at least a bit. We’re decluttering here – it’s a relatively low-key slow process, but I think we’ve thrown out or donated 25 bags of STUFF and ten feet of shelf space. And I don’t know what we’ll do about paring down stuff that matters.

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Welcome to the Funhouse, 2016

flowersIf I were truly organized, this would have appeared on New Year’s Day, but I had a very nice weekend instead. Now it’s Monday, and I’ve had my coffee and homemade yogurt and done some stuff. I’m feeling good about the year and have made the usual sorts of resolutions. Things that I’m trying in 2016:

More productive. Daily writing, no matter what the circumstances, shooting for 3k, but taking 1k as the absolute minimum. Getting the novel done, done, done, and a slew of other stories and projects, all stuff I’m looking forward to, but which must be banged out and then (ugh) revised. Daily free-writes to get warmed up and help me listen to my unconscious. Doing some of the daily little practices that end up accumulating, like practicing my Spanish on Duolingo.

More organized. Sitting down in the morning to take ten minutes to sort out my day and write the three most important things to get accomplished. Tracking things better. Having a household system where things have their designated place and get put there, and eliminating the clutter clusters, the places where stuff gets dumped and remains. The new house helps with not just the act of having to purge and sort that moving involved, but in having more spaces to put things.

More mindful. That same morning moment helps me figure out my day and live it more purposefully, less prey to random disorientation and derailing. Keeping a daybook/journal where I jot down ten things about the day, as well as a short list of what I got done, and the more important occurrences like visitors, trips, etc. Giving my poet-side time to sit and think at times.

More healthy. With the move, I’m walking more, and with the Fitbit, I could be tracking that and making sure I hit at least 5 miles a day, but hoping to be closer to an average of ten by the end of the year. Fewer eat-ALL-the-sweets moments and more fruits/veggies. Focusing on positivity and trimming negative crap out of my life where I can. Celebrating things that should be celebrated and practicing gratitude for being alive in such a nifty world, under what are pretty darn good circumstances.

I thought about trying to map everything out in Habitica but in the end I’ve just got a journal page with it all listed, plus I’m trying to build in habits that let me audit how I’m doing.

Part of mindfulness is the occasional moment where I remind myself that I have managed to do okay so far, and that despite feeling like a hapless mess half the time internally, I put on a reasonable facsimile of a responsible adult with an actual career and stuff. That’s kinda key too. While my inner teenager does give me a lot of pleasure, she’s also pretty insecure. To me, taking care of all those internal personae seems crucial, and it’s that part of me that’s actually achieved a semblance of adulthood.

Currently working on a couple of collaborations and a story whose title makes me laugh every time, but actually seems to have some social commentary at its heart.

Happy 2016, everyone! Here’s to health and happiness, to an overall increase in human empathy and a decrease in insecurity and meanness. Here’s to living life in a way that’s meaningful, rather than treading water and waiting for things to occur. Here’s to wonderful words and songs sung together, full voiced and beautiful, even with the occasional disharmony to make the rest sound all the better.

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