The Joy of Discarding

It was in the midst of the move, sometime around midnight when I decided that once again, I had collected way too much stuff. I've always been a collector of just about anything that catches my fancy and it's very, very hard for me to get rid of anything.

Seriously, I'm like a step away from hoarder territory here.

But while packing and crying and wondering if I really, really needed six pairs of jeans I decided that I really needed to figure out what I wanted to keep and get rid of everything I didn't need. Or keep everything I did. And when I got back to Louisiana I did a google search and stumbled across the idea of only keeping things that bring you joy.

Joy.

That's weird. I decided I liked that idea. It wasn't utilitarian. It wasn't based on time, which I'm horrible at anyway. But joy.

And that has seriously been one of the hardest things to make myself figure out. I don't feel 'joy' easily. When I started discarding things, it was tough. Really tough. I couldn't tell joy from fond memories from anything else. In fact, I was more likely to feel guilt and fear than anything while going through my things. Guilt that I hadn't used it. Guilt that I didn't like it. Fear that I'd throw it out and need it. Fear that it meant something to someone else or that I wouldn't know what it meant to me until after I'd tossed it.

Joy was not a part of this process for a while.

In fact, it wasn't until today after tossing out three black trash bags of things and giving away several times that to goodwill that I finally figured it out when I was doing my photo albums. My photos were all shoved in an album that smelled faintly of cat pee (probably from as far back as Spot), sometimes ten photos to a pocket meant for two. The photos were starting to bend from the pressure and there was no rhyme or reason, sometimes the same photo could be found several pages later.

I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I could look at those pages filled with feels and toss any of them. In fact, I tossed most of them.

And now, when I look through the photos, instead of seeing sad, bent, frustrated images, I see crisp, clean, happy photos that make me smile. My photo album isn't a place to store all my photos. My photos are memories I want to keep and treasure and my album now reflects that.

And with that epiphany I have to go through my stuff once again.