Clutter

Sentimentality = Clutter


I don’t like clutter it makes me anxious. I like things to be orderly, because then things are predictable. I like things to be neat, so I can see what I have.  I joked once about having the opposite of a hoarding problem, I wasn’t joking…but I don’t think it is a problem either. I don’t get attached to things. I didn’t save the flowers from my wedding, I tried to give my wedding dress away (I’m not wearing it again, and I don’t have a daughter), if I get a gift that I don’t use I donate it. I don’t keep stuff. I don't even keep too much of my children's artwork. Moms all over the world would utter a collective "gasp of horror"....if they knew. 

I’m annoying, I know. D is really messy has a different organizational strategy than I do. He is sentimental about things, and he has a lot of stuff for “just in case”. He can contain it, that is, I tell him where it will bother me the least and that is where he puts it. I am annoying, right?

Photographs are my one exception, but it’s not my fault. I keep my photographs up-to-date. Every 2 or 3 months I print off the digital photos to go into a photo album, I add in any photos that were given to me for those months. I have been doing this for the last 8 years, everything is chronological this way. The problem is when people give me photos of an event a year or even six months later. I haven’t left space for those photos! But I can’t throw them away, either. So they go into a box. I don’t know what to do. Do I start a new album? It would have odd and end photos that cover years. This is not at all appealing to me.

Sometimes, though, I go through the box for no reason.  It is a perfect representation of things I am sentimental about: my children, my husband, my family, and my friends. They are all mixed up, in different sizes, some from long ago, old friends, new friends, people I’ve never met, and people I see every day.

The clutter in this box does make me anxious. I love and care for those people.  So because I am my mother's daughter, I worry...I am anxious for them.