If you follow me on Instagram, you'll already know that the Marie Kondo fad of cleaning out your house has come to us here on East 5th Avenue. I know I may be late to the party and sometimes I turn my nose up at new trends, but then hypocritically fully dive in headfirst and adopt them after awhile of self-righteousness. (Fun, right?) But, this new fad has been a good and positive change in our house. I openly admit that I hoard things and have liked the instruction on being more intentional about the objects that I surround myself with. But having a less cluttered life, I'm experiencing a less cluttered brain. And since throwing things away is Ben's Love Language, our marriage is feeling fed. ;)
If you haven't read the book "The Magic Art of Tidying Up" by Japanese author Marie Kondo, then you may not know what I'm talking about. Basically she encourages people to use her method and go item by item in their house to determine if objects "spark joy." If they don't, then they should be discarded. It's not as much about purging, as it is about being surrounded by things that spark joy. (In turn, you feel released from keeping things that aren't useful or joyful to you any more). Anyways, it's a good book and it's brought positive change.
The change has even trickled down to our children. Bode doesn't keep many things in his room, Mimi on the other hand keeps most things she's ever touched (You never know when trash can turn into an art project * chagrined emoji *). Where Ben just shakes his head and wants to pull out his hair at Mimi's clutter, my heart goes out to her because I understand. Hoarding and being sentimental over things is a habit I have to work hard to curb.
That being said, we've tried to "Marie Kondo" her room. This after she had been so discouraged (mostly at bedtime when nerves are shot and wits are at their end) about the messiness of her room and how it was making her feel overwhelmed. So, last weekend we rolled up our sleeves and went to work on her room. It was QUITE the task. But, in the end, we filled many satisfying garbage bags and now can see her floor.
During the process of clearing out a book shelf, Mimi decided that she really didn't want the collection of Babysitter's Club books in her room. Up until this point in the purging process, I had been quick to trash any discards. But reaching for the Babysitters Club books stopped me in my tracks. You see, last year sometime when Mimi expressed the TINIEST interest in reading these, I jumped FULLY on board and tracked down any copy I could find. Friends offered theirs for us to borrow, others found us copies to have. I also stalked the Goodwill for a few weeks building up our collection. Why the excitement over a book series? I guess you could say it was personal. As a (mostly) only child, books were my ever faithful companions. When I packed my bags to head from one parent's house to another every weekend, my current book I was reading came with me. As a treat on my Dad's weekend, we'd go to B. Dalton books and I'd get to pick up the latest copy of a Babysitter's Club book and I'd devour it over the weekend. These characters were real to me and they helped me solidify my love for reading. When life was hard or scary or lonely, I could always dive headfirst into a book and be in someone else's world.
So when my daughter wanted to meet Dawn, Stacy, Kristy, Claudia and Marianne (the members of the Babysitters Club) I couldn't oblige her fast enough. And it brought up a painful fact that I couldn't just go into my own belongings and pull out my own copies for her. Because, unlike my friends whose households and families stayed in tact through their childhoods, mine was bumpy and my childhood treasures were cycled through a step parent and a broken house, never to be returned again. Somewhere around this time in my life is when I started to put too heavy an emphasis on belongings. My stuff didn't represent the tangible item, as much as my lost childhood moments and my security. At one point in middle school (a particularly painful time in many adolescent's lives, but compounded even more in mine by some family confrontations and hardships) I left one of my houses with only a trash bag of my things. It was the epitome of my transient childhood and seared in my mind that I never wanted to feel without my special treasures or belongings again.
***
So as I sit here looking at this box of discarded Babysitter's Club books, I can't bring myself to get rid of them. They've actually sat in the hall for a week or two and Ben has even wondered why they haven't moved. It occurred to me today that the mental block about these books holds so much more weight than I was even able to comprehend. It's the nostalgia for my childhood that was (and sometimes wasn't). It's the ability to claim a momento of my past that had since been lost. And these books were like my best friends. (Actually, a lyric from and Eric Church song that speaks to that has been ringing in my ears all afternoon).
So, while all my Marie Kondo schooling has taught me to let go of the past, to thank each item for what it brought to me and move on (so as to symbolically move on as well), I'm at a stopping place. The little girl in me wants to keep these. For just a little while longer.
****
